


Black Blood Blitzkrieg

by GypsyReaper



Category: Hellsing, Soul Eater
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Hellsing Organization, Nazis, Vampires, Violence, meisters and weapons, teenage angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 08:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 43,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1380973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GypsyReaper/pseuds/GypsyReaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soul Eater X Hellsing!<br/>Calling in a favor, Sir Integra has Stein examine a freak chip, but in his studies he discovers the only way to learn everything about the enemy is to reanimate the soul within, unleashing Nazi-madness! Eventually, the kids have to go and help Hellsing try and stave off the Millennium Nazi War, but things will never be the same....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

Chapter One

The ghouls at the bottom of the hill moved slowly but surely at their tasks, like ants, obedient to the end, but with no thought behind their actions. Seras watched them, both curious and disgusted by their very presence. The army of ghouls was loading boxes and other strange equipment onto trucks from the old, worn-down Millennium facility. She didn't see anyone around who would have been controlling the zombie creatures--conventionally, ghouls needed to be within a specific area in order to hear a vampire's orders, but ever since the Valentine Brothers showed up at Hellsing's HQ with an army of trained ghouls in tow, the conventional was forever out the window. 

"I don't see anyone, Master," she said. "Just ghouls and boxes." 

"What are zhe zombies doing?" asked Pip Bernadette, Captain of the mercenary gang, the Wild Geese. This was his first outing as a Hellsing soldier, and boy had it been eventful. Getting to South America, only to have to battle off Rio de Janeiro SWAT and the Dandy Man, then their helicopter was destroyed by the heat-seeking missile from a renegade's bazooka over the jungle before they could get to their safe house. It was as they were trekking through the jungle that they came across the ghoul movers. 

"It doesn't matter what they're doing," Alucard said quietly. "Our orders were clear: Search and Destroy. These pathetic monsters are nothing more than cannon fodder for us, so we should get through them as fast as possible and move on." 

"Now that I can understand to the letter," Pip said, pulling the pistol from his waist. He winked at Seras as he made sure it was loaded. "Care to join me, little lady?"

The nerve! Seras thought, determined to show this ladies' man she could take care of herself. Her hold tightened on the handle of the large sniper rifle, the BAERLKS, which she owned besides the Harkonnan. 

It was less a battle, and more a simple slaughter. Ghouls were by nature slow creatures, and over half the ghoul army had been destroyed by the hail of bullets before the remainders became aggressive towards the attackers. Soon, there was nothing but rivers of blood, the acrid smell of death, and bullet-riddled body parts.

"Fucking disgusting!" Pip said, kicking a dead ghoul. The ghoul, however, reached up and grabbed his foot, causing him to shriek in a very unmanly manner. He fumbled with his gun for a second before putting a bullet in the undead brain, then sighed in obvious relief. 

"Through the head, or through the heart, mercenary," Alucard said as he strolled by, a thin smile on his lips at the frenchman's loss of composure. "A bullet anywhere else still lets the ghoul's teeth work just fine. Remember that next time." 

Pip stuck his tongue out at the retreating vampire's back, only to be caught in the act by Seras, who was attempting to stifle a few giggles. It was nice to be able to laugh every once in a while. 

Alucard was already at the door of the worn-down, grey brick building, listening for any movement within the dark structure. He did not hear any sounds, but that did not stop him from putting a fresh clip into the Casul. Seras and Pip where right behind him; he could still smell the fear emanating from the mercenary. This killing did not give Alucard pleasure--there was no battle of foes, but a simple extermination of pests. This was a job and nothing more. Perhaps there was an enemy inside worthy of his time, his power? Unlikely, but he was still being driven to find the One: the one who could kill him. 

Pip hung back and let the two vampires lead the way into the dark doorway, which lead to a set of stairs leading down into what could the very bowels of Hell. Out of everything that he had done in his life, he certainly had never, ever expected to be escorting vampires into a zombie-filled hellhole. 

The air only seemed to get thicker as they descended, it seemed to close in around him, tried to consume him. Pip, however, wasn't the superstitious type, so he pushed back at the silly thoughts and brought his mind back to the game. This was the type of situation where one wrong move could easily lead to a horrible existence as a mindless ghoul if he wasn't care. But there was something to the air, something that made the hairs on his neck stand to attention. 

"Master, is that...?" Seras did not even finished her sentence before they were suddenly at the bottom of the stairs, in the doorway of a cavernous room. 

Pip had to push his way by Seras slightly to see what was in the room, but he just as quickly wished he had stayed topside as he turned to vomit. 

It was an obvious laboratory, but not even Dr. Mengele would have had quarters so horrific. There was splatters of old, rusty blood everywhere--on the walls, the floor, the ceiling, as though a mad artist had used the lab for his studio. 

On the left wall were bodies in various states of decomposition. Some were missing limbs, or their chests were opened revealing missing organs, and some where even missing heads. There were examination bodies with even more bodies, both male and female. Along the walls were cages of animals: dogs and cats that did not survive their ordeals. The overwhelming stench of rotting meat and old blood, which made his eyes water and nostrils burn, did little to help Pip’s ordeal. He had seen death before, but this was a whole new level of barbarity.

There were computers in rows in the middle of the room, and rows upon rows of liquid filled-glass tubes. Most of the tubes were empty, but some had what looked like computer chips floating within. At the very back of the room was a large Nazi flag on the wall: old, torn, and faded, but the swastika was just as vibrant in its black hatred as yesteryear. 

"This must be where Millennium has been hiding all this time," Alucard said, walking through the lab with obvious curiosity. Sears was so shocked by the brutality of the place that, had she been able to, she probably would have been heaving up her lunch alongside Pip. 

"My God," she said, following her Master. "Is this real?" 

"Very," Alucard said, peering at the bodies on the wall. "The power of Millennium comes not from their strength, but from their all-to-willing use of brutality to achieve their ends." 

Seras wandered over to the closest glass tube and stared at the chip within. It seemed so innocent, and yet the carnage around her told her this little device was the cause of it all. She felt the overwhelming urge to use her rifle as a club and destroy the tube and chip in one blow, but she had a better idea. 

"Master, let's take this back with us." 

Alucard eyes seemed to pierce right through her. "Why should we do that, Police Girl?"

"Maybe there's a way to destroy this thing en masse, like a defect or weakness we can use," she said quietly. 

"It's no fun to exploit weakness," Alucard said, turning. "What's truly enjoyable is to exploit arrogance, and use that to destroy our enemies, from the inside out." 

"It was just an idea...." she said, hoping she hadn't upset her Master. 

Alucard looked at her for a few more seconds, far too long for Seras' comfort, and nodded. "We'll take one. You may have a point, Police Girl. You, human," he said aloud to Pip. The mercenary was through vomiting, and he seemed unsteady on his feet. "Yea?" 

"We're destroying this place, now. Leave not a brick left unscorched," Alucard said as he swept past them back up the stairs. 

Pip nodded. "I'll be too glad to."

~*~

Though he was glad to finally be back up into the fresh air, Pip felt more dread going back down the stairs with his homemade bombs now that he knew what was awaiting him. He had been able to find everything he needed in the boxes the ghouls had been moving, and was now holding a bomb that would leave nothing left. 

"Hurry up, girl!" he said when he was back in the lab. The girl vampire was still there, trying to figure out how to eject the glass tube and get the chip. "I'm setting this bomb now and leaving it, whether you are still en here or no!" 

"Right, I know!" Seras said. Finally giving into her frustration, she plowed her elbow through the glass, the liquid cascading down onto the stained tile floor. She was able to grab the chip, wiped it off carefully on her skirt and then stashed it safely in a pocket. "I'm ready!" 

"Then let's go!" Pip roared, setting the bomb. He rushed past and grabbed her hand, pulling her along behind him up the stairs. She still blushed as she ran. 

Alucard was waiting patiently for them beside the running truck, which Pip had already hot-wired. "Is everything set?" he asked as they ran past. 

"Yes, now get in we have but a moment!" Pip said as he slid in, Seras beside him. Alucard stepped in the back of the truck and hung onto the side as Pip hauled ass through the overhung path that counted as a road. They were just far enough away to be safe, but the vibrations from the explosion made the truck bounce horribly as they drove. 

"Another job well done," Pip said satisfactorily as he lit a cigarette. "Now, where is zat safehouse we're supposed to be going to?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sir Integra makes a phone call to ask a favor from a traitor, and Stein makes Spirit uncomfortable.

Chapter Two

It's hard to believe that something so small can cause so much damned trouble. The urge to take her cigar and put it out right on the chip was almost overpowering. Even holding the chip made uncomfortable tingles raise the hair on her arm. 

"Sir Integra," Walter spoke quietly, breaking the young woman from her reverie. "The connection is being made." He placed a small laptop on the desk before her, the message on the screen telling her that the wireless call was currently being connected. She couldn't help but sigh. 

"Walter, please put on a strong pot of tea. I'll need a cup when I'm done." 

Walter's eyes narrowed slightly. "Mum, we don't have to be talking to him. I'm sure we can find someone else who is just as knowledgeable about these things--"

Integra cut her butler off. "No, Walter, we cannot. Though he is eccentric and dangerous, the good doctor is also an irreplaceable ally with knowledge of the occult that we cannot even begin to imagine." She looked down at the chip still in her hand. "We need his help, as much I hate to admit." 

A quiet ding! told them that the connection was finished. Integra sat up a little straighter, smoothed her suit, and pressed the enter button. 

The computer's Web-Cam came on, and she found herself staring into a poorly lit room. The room seemed to be made of cold concrete, with bright arrows painted on the floor. She did not see who she was attempting to contact, and was about to speak when a mop of silver hair filled the screen. The eyes were dim with sleep, but there was no hiding the stitches across his face, nor the giant screw in his head.

"Well, well. Sir Integra Hellsing. Of anyone to call me in the middle of the night, I certainly wasn't expecting you to be the culprit." 

"Good Evening, Dr. Fraken Stein. I apologize if I woke you." 

That was a first for Walter. Integra wasn't one to apologize for anything, not if she felt she had acted in her own best interest. The situation must have been more dire for her to play at being nice with such an....eccentric.

Stein caught it too, but did not speak of it. "It's been a long time since last time we talked, Sir Integra. Have you finally reconsidered my offer?"

"Your offer." How could two such words make her feel the tingles of fear trying to worm into her gut?

"Yes. The one where I examine you." He placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. "I promise to put everything back when I'm done. I'll even give you only the barest of scars. I would hate to blemish such perfect skin." He smiled, and she had to fight the urge to close the computer and toss it out the window. What made her think this was a good idea again?!

Walter was also getting disturbed, and he made the barest move forward, which she stopped with a sideways look. They needed his help, and threatening him was not going to help their cause. 

"I fail to see why you're so fascinated, Stein."

The good doctor smiled. "Not just any young girl becomes a Knight of the Round Table without some sort of interesting biological quirk, and I'm only curious to find out what it is." 

"I assure you, I am human, and I plan on staying that way. I do, however, need your assistance, Dr. Stein." She picked up the chip and held it before the camera for him to see. 

His eyes narrowed as he frowned. "A computer chip? I'm a scientist, not technical support."

"This is no ordinary chip, Stein, and I assure you this is right up your alley. I assume you know of traditional vampires and how to create them?"

"Yes, of course. A vampire bites a person who is a virgin and of the opposite gender to create another. If a non-virgin or same-sex person is bitten, they become a ghoul, a zombie."

"Someone has been experimenting with that process, and this is their answer. This chip can somehow turn humans into vampires, and the ghouls those FREAK vampires create can create more ghouls with but a simple bite. A self-perpetuating army of hungry ghouls, and it's only the beginning. The situation is becoming harder to contain. Stein, I need you to examine this chip, and do what you must to find a way to destroy it."

Stein said nothing for a moment; he simply stared at her, the smoke rising lazily from the cigarette in his mouth. He lifted his hand to his head, and cranked the screw in his head three times, the loud crunching noise making her close her eyes. 

"You must be in a real bind to contact me," Stein said, all seriousness in his voice. "So tell me, who's been creating these chips? They must be very sneaky to have been working right under your all-knowing nose."

"Stein! I don't have time for you to be insulting me, or the Hellsing Organization! If you wish, I'll just go to someone else." 

"Calm down, Integra. There's no point in trying to threaten me. After all, I didn't call you. It was just a simply statement, an opinion. And as we both know, there is no one else. I know you don't make house-calls because it's in your nature."

She sighed. For some reason, Stein always made her feel like a little girl again, no matter how much she had grown up. "All you need to know is that it's bad. There's a group out there creating vampires for their own nefarious purposes. Will you agree to examine the chip and find any weakness in it?"

The good doctor was quiet for a moment, and Integra felt a tingle of despair. She couldn't afford another trap like the Valentine Brothers had pulled on her; she needed all the help and intelligence she could get right now. 

"I'd love to look at it." Stein said calmly cutting through her moment of worry. "Sounds truly fascinating. And Integra? Next time, please check your time zones before making personal calls." With that, he shut off his screen, cutting the link between them. 

Integra stared at the black screen and sighed as she shut down the computer. A strong smell filled the room, and she turned to she Walter waiting with a cup of tea. "I hope it went well, Mum?" 

"I hope this was a good decision on my part," she said, looking out onto the moonlight fields below her window. "I just really hope I don't regret this later." 

~*~

Maka knew something was wrong with Professor Stein when he rolled into class with hardly any energy in his aura. He moved slowly, and tiredly, like an exhausted sloth. She had experienced enough all-nighters to know the doctor probably hadn't slept at all the night before. "Soul, what do you think kept Dr. Stein up all night?" she whispered. 

"I dunno. Maybe his screw was loose," Soul said, already bored. Maka rolled her eyes at his indifference. 

"Class," Stein said without greeting, "today we're gonna do things a little differently." 

Death the Kid, sitting a few rows over from Maka and Soul, also picked up on the strange, intense vibe coming from the normally laid-back doctor. "I wonder what it could be?" he said to himself. 

"Does anyone where know what a Midian is?" Stein asked. Most of the students turned to each other, the questioning look on everyone's faces. 

"Black Star, what's a Midian?" Tsubaki asked, to which her overzealous Master growled. "I dunno, but whoever it is, if they try to steal my spotlight I WILL RAIN DOWN FURY UPON THEIR HEAD!!" This last part was shouted as he jumped on top of his desk. A throwing needle in the shape of a screw slammed into his forehead and the resulting gush of blood made him faint into his seat. 

"Excusing Black Star's usual performance, does anyone have any idea?" Stein asked, placing the two extra throwing screws in a pocket, extras in case the first didn't work. 

Ox, Maka, and Kid all raised their hands. 

"Maka, what is a Midian?"

"Isn't it just another term for vampire?" She had only come across the term a couple times in all her reading, so she was a little unsure of herself. 

"That's correct, Maka. Freak, Nosferatu, Midian. All are synonymous for vampire, the nocturnal creatures that live on the blood of others. Ox, tell me, what is a vampire's greatest weakness?"

"The sun. It will burn them to ash if they come out during sunrise to sunset. That's why vampires come out at night."

"Again, correct." 

"I really don't like this discussion," Liz moaned as she clutched her younger sister. "Vampires are super scary!" 

"No they aren't, Liz! They so cute with their giant fangs, used to rip open throats!" Patty giggled, making Liz moan again. 

Stein turned, and looked at Kid. "So, Kid, what is a vampire's greatest advantage?"

Kid's yellow eyes narrowed. "The ghoul, a zombie-like creature created when a vampire bites a non-virgin or someone of the same sex." 

"Excellent answer, Kid."

"Sir," Soul raised his hand. "Wouldn't the biggest threat be the vampire creating more vampires? Ghouls don't sound very threatening." 

"A vampire can only create another if it drinks the blood of a virgin of the opposite gender, so a vampire creating an army of vampires is highly unlikely, especially with the amount of underage sex that is running rampant in this time. Ghouls are essentially zombies under the vampire's control, and can be devastating en masse."

"Patty, make the teacher stop talking about zombies!" Liz whined, but Patty was too busy coloring in a picture of a giraffe to be bothered. 

"Tonight, class, your homework is simple. Write a one-page paper about the ways to hunt down and kill a vampire threat. Turn it in tomorrow morning. Until then, good day." With that, Stein wheeled back out to the hallway, leaving his students joyous at the early day. 

"Glad to get outta there," Soul said, stretching as he stood. "But I can't help but wonder why he decided to talk about vampires today." 

"I wish I knew," Maka said, making her way to the library. "I wish I knew." 

~*~

Stein was pouring himself a cup of coffee in the teacher's lounge when he heard Spirit say "Interesting lecture today, Stein." 

"Thought I'd see what the kids knew," Stein said with a shrug. 

"You do remember that this is the DWMA. We deal with kishin and witches. There are other organizations that deal with vampires and ghouls." 

"What I decide to teach is my own choice. I'm sure Lord Death wouldn't mind." 

"I mind! That's my Maka in there! I can just see it now, you taking the kids out for a little educational field trip, and it'll be my little Maka who gets bitten and turned into a vampire!" 

"That may be a legitamate worry, but that's assuming that Maka is still a virgin." 

"A......a........" Spirit's face seemed to fall off his face to the floor. "Stein! What are you...why would you.....what's wrong with you?!" 

"A lot of things," the mad scientist said with a chuckle, turning the screw a few more times.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stein gets a present and the kids wonder what he's up to.

Chapter Three

He had been unable to sleep for the rest of the night after Integra's call; when school was finally over, he made his way back to his lab as fast as possible, hoping to catch up on the hours of sleep he had already missed. Stein had been tossing and turning all night, wondering about what secrets that little chip had been hiding. But that chip wasn't the only thing that had been on Stein's mind. Integra had certainly become a beautiful woman, even if the suits she wore did little to flatter her figure....

Stein became alert as soon as he grabbed the door handle to his lab--it was loose. Whenever he left his lab, he always turned the knob a little extra so it would stick. Today it was loose. Someone had entered his lab, but had made it look undisturbed. This was greatly upsetting to the doctor; after all, it was one thing to poke and prod other people (he was a scientist after all) but it was quite disturbing for the tables to be turned on him. 

I don't sense anyone inside, he thought to himself, slowly pushing the door open. His instincts had been right, and he was home alone. But on the table where his computer sat was a package. 

It was simple, and small. A brown paper-wrapped box, with "Stein" written on it in possible marker. 

"Aw, no pretty ribbon? Integra, you're really starting to slack," he said in a slightly disappointed tone. Pulling out a box cutter from his desk, he quickly but carefully opened the package, reached inside, and pulled out the chip. 

It was half as big as a business card, and just as thin. The surface was smooth, like gloss, and he almost dropped the chip. Tiny wires seemed to grow from the edges, and it was a translucent blue in color. Something caught his eye of the backside of the chip during his inspection. Holding it closer to his glasses, he was able to make out what seemed to be a tiny swastika engraving in the center. "How interesting," Stein whispered. 

He shoved everything that was of no immediate importance onto the floor from the desk as he cleared a work place. Gathering together his instruments, he saw his hands trembling slightly: he almost dropped his microscope. 

I can feel the excitement growing inside me, he thought as a grin spread over his face. It's been so long since I was able to dissect something! And if Integra felt the need to contact me, then it must be a truly remarkable little piece of engineering. I can hardly wait to get started! 

~*~

"Where's the Doctor?" Maka said again. This must have been a dozen times already! Soul thought, trying not to snap at her. "Not here, obviously," he said, arms crossed as he tried to go back to sleep at his desk. There were many other whispered inquires as well. Stein was never late to class, yet here it was, already fifteen minutes past time for class to start, and still no sign from him.

Just at that moment, a large blue man came into the classroom; it was Sid, the neighborhood zombie-teacher-meister, whose resurrection had been in fact Stein's work. He looked around the class, looking just as confused as everyone else. "No Stein, huh?" he asked aloud. Running a hand over his head, he sighed. 

"Alright, kids, listen up. Class is canceled today. Leave your homework assignment on the table as you leave, and hopefully you'll be back on track tomorrow. Have yourselves a good day." 

Alright! Soul thought. Now I don't have to explain why I didn't do my homework, I can just blame Sid for losing it in the shuffle! 

Death the Kid was waiting outside of the classroom door, along with his weapons Patty and Liz. As Maka and Soul wandered out, they saw him and walked over to say hello. 

"Maka," Kid said, "does Stein not show up all that often?"

"Never," she replied, looking a little worried. "Since he became a professor he's always been on time, no matter what. I wonder what's keeping him."

"Who cares? He might be on assignment or something; he is a Meister after all." Soul yawned. "I vote we go back home and go back to sleep...."

"Why? Even if you slept for a whole century, all that beauty rest couldn't cure the permanent ugly you've got going on." 

Soul turned and snarled at Black Star, who had walked up behind him. "Look who's talking! Why do you think the mirrors in the bathrooms break every time you walk in?"

"Because those mirrors are made of flimsy material that just can't handle how awesome I look!" Black Star snapped back. The two boys started wrestling in the hall, insulting each other as best they could, while everyone ignored them. 

"That wouldn't make any sense," Maka said, ignoring their fight. "If Stein was on an assignment, why would Sid be so surprised? Something's going on here." 

"We could always go and check up on him, if that would make you feel any better," Tsubaki mentioned. Kid nodded in agreement. He had never been to Stein's lab before, and he was very curious about what had kept their stitched-up mad scientist from class. 

Liz, however, did not like where this conversation was going. "No way! I heard that he lives next to a cemetery, and he experiments on dead bodies and stuff!" 

"He does," Tsubaki calmly replied.   
Liz's jaw fell to the floor. "Wha-what?!"

"How do you think Sid became a zombie? He wasn't born like that, you know," Maka said factually. 

"No, no, no! I refuse to go to a creepy cemetery to visit a mad scientist at his creepy old lab-no, no, NO!!" Liz screamed. 

Patty giggled. "Yay for zombies, yay for zombies! They're fun to play tag with cause they're so slow they'll never catch you, just don't get tagged with their teeth or you lose!" 

~*~

The seven kids stood in front of the intimidating metal doors to Stein's lab, all feeling the little tug of fear at the back of their minds. For Soul, Maka, Tsubaki, and Black Star, it was the first time back at these doors since their remedial lessons oh so long ago. Maka remembered the fear she had felt, so overwhelming she had almost given into it, until Soul brought her back from the brink of despair. Black Star had almost died at Stein's hands here as well, as a helpless Tsubaki was forced to look on. 

Though Kid and the Thompson sisters had not been present at the fight, they had watched it along with Lord Death in his chambers. Kid was glad he had not been forced to fight the good Doctor, he wasn't even sure he could beat Stein in his current state, and he had grown much since the original battle with Stein. 

"Who goes first?" Kid asked. 

"Maka should go first," Soul said, chuckling when she turned at him glowering. "No way! Why not you?"

"I'LL go first!" Black Star said loudly. "I'm not about to let one of you steal the show! Tsubaki, come on!" 

Weapon and Meister made their way as the others looked on, both curious and fearful of what they might find. 

"I can't look Patty!" Liz whined, hiding behind her younger sister. 

"OH MY GOD!!" Kid exclaimed just as Black Star was about to pound on the door. 

"WHAT?" Everyone screamed. Kid grew pale and began to shake, a quaking hand lifted up so he was pointing at the wall. "There are seventy-seven stitches on that wall! SEVENTY-SEVEN!! You can't divide seventy-seven by two equally! Oh my god, this place is awful, it's hellish, I can't go on!" With that, he collapsed into a pile of neurotic ooze. 

This was probably the first time Liz had even been thankful for one of his episodes. As she crouched down by him, she turned and smiled. "Don't mind us, we'll just stay here with Kid, go on, go on!" she shooed at them. 

"Aw, I wanted to see to dead bodies...." Patty moaned. 

"Guess it's up to us," Soul said, as the four remaining still stood by the metal doors. 

"Yeah, let's get this over with," Maka said. 

"Right, here goes," Black Star laughed as he pounded on the doors. "Hey Stein, open up! Pizza delivery for Dr. Stein! Hurry up before it gets cold!" 

"Black Star, what if Stein doesn't like pizza?" Tsubaki asked worriedly. Before the boy could answer, the door handle creaked, making everyone scream and jump. Stein's hair was in more disarray than usual, and his eyes were glazed over in sleeplessness. "It's awful early for house calls," he mumbled. 

"Um, Dr. Stein, you missed class today. It was canceled," Maka explained. Stein looked at her for a few seconds before he registered what she had said. 

"Oh, damn. I must've been working nonstop. Sorry about that kids. I'm sure you were very upset to have to miss class like that. I'll try to keep a better eye on the time for tomorrow. Now, if there's nothing else, then I bid you good day." 

"What exactly are you working on in there?" Soul asked. Stein looked at him and smiled as innocently as possible. "Just a little side project, nothing for you to be interested in. See you tomorrow kids." Before anyone else could speak, Stein slammed the door on them, and there was silence. 

"Something's definitely going on in there," Black Star said. 

"You heard the Doctor, it's nothing for us to worry about," Tsubaki replied. "Let's go back now. This place is just as creepy in the daylight as it is at night."

"Something doesn't seem right, Maka. It felt like he was...hiding something," Soul whispered as they walked away. 

"Well, whatever it is, it's none of our business. And since we don't have class until later, we're going to the library so you can do that homework you conveniently forgot last night!" 

"What? Maka are you serious?"

"Yes! I refuse to have a lazy, good-for-nothing scythe for a weapon, now move it mister!" 

~*~

I can't believe I lost track of time like that. Lord Death probably won't appreciate me forgetting about class, but....this is incredible! The technology alone is so advanced it makes everything in my lab look as ancient as flint and stone. But as I've discovered fairly early on, this chip can only tell me so much. It needs to be implanted in a body. I will be able to learn so much more once I've finished that step. I wonder how it will feel, to take these hands so used to destruction, and use them for creation?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Kids decided they are tired of Stein keeping secrets from them

Chapter Four

The next week was a very odd one for many. As he had promised, Stein returned the day following his absence, and every day after that, but his classes were somewhat "lacking". Every morning he would slowly roll his chair into the room, proclaim that after a long night he was unable to teach class, and distractedly tell his students to "study something" as he rolled back out and disappeared for the day. Even Soul, who normally would've enjoyed the non-classes, was actually starting to miss the daily dissections. 

"I can't take it anymore!" Soul growled, standing up a minute after Stein departed as was becoming his routine.

Maka hadn't even put down her book when the doctor has entered, knowing that after his announcement he would leave. "What's wrong, Soul?" she asked.

"I'm bored, that's what's wrong!" Soul snarled as students started the leave. "I'm gonna go find out what's wrong with the good doctor."

"Mk, have fun," Maka said, shooing her weapon away. Soul rolled his eyes at her. "C'mon, Black Star!" 

"Huh? What do you need me for?" the boy wonderingly said as Soul grabbed his arm and tried to pull him along. "I like not having to deal with Stein this early in the morning." 

"You said yourself that he's up to something, so why don't we see what it is? You'll be famous for figuring it out," Soul said enticingly. 

"Damn straight I will be! Come on!" The two boys disappeared into the crowd, leaving the girls by themselves. 

~*~

In the hallway, the boys turned when they heard their names called. Turning, Soul saw Death the Kid coming up to them. "What's up, Kid?" he asked. 

"I was hoping to tag along," Kid said. "I myself am very curious what's been keeping Stein from classes all week."

"Fine by me," Soul stated. "So, where should we begin?"

"There may be some clues in the teacher's lounge," Kid said. 

"Come on you slow pokes, let's go!" Black Star shouted. The three hurried down the hallways to the teacher's room. Cracking open the door slightly, Kid peered inside. "It's empty," he said. Looking back, he saw Soul and Star looking everywhere with shifty eyes. 

"Is there a problem?" Kid asked. 

"No!" both said at once. Soul scratched his head sheepishly. "Students aren't supposed to go inside." 

"They say that there's a curse and anyone who goes inside gets turned into a frog, and is used in the next dissection class!" Black Star explained in his best conspirator's voice. 

"Soul, you can't really believe that," Kid said in a disappointed tone. "I mean, I can understand a simpleton like Black Star falling for that--"

"Hey, I'm not a simpleton, I RUN this town!--"

"But you? I thought you were made of classier stuff." Kid stood before them with his arms crossed. 

"Hey, I'm cool, I just don't feel like having to deal with detention, is all. Come on, there's no one around," Soul said. Kid stepped aside of the door, and Soul got behind Black Star. Before the assassin wannabe could react, Soul pushed him into the door, causing Black Star to stumble and fall into the office. He shouted, and jumped up like a frightened cat before patting himself down. He sighed in relief when he wasn't a frog. 

"That wasn't funny, guys!" Black Star snarled. Both Soul and Kid were struggling not to laugh. 

"We had to make sure it was safe," Soul said, stifling his laughter. 

"Next time, make sure it's safe yourself!" Black Star snapped. 

The three walked in, and Soul had to admit that it was very...boring. There were several desks for the individual teachers, a couple coffee pots and tea pots in a small kitchen area, and a large book shelf filled with books. Kid decided to check out the books while Black Star and Soul looked to see if they could find Stein's desk. 

Kid was surprised to see that the books ranged in subject of occult phenomenon, not just kishin or witches, but also ghouls, goblins, vampires, immortals, werewolves, ghosts, demons, and other creatures, plus the different kinds of magics that could be used by witches and the ilk. There were also several books on weapons and meisters. 

He pulled down one particular book on vampires, and started flipping through the pages as the other two came up behind him. "We didn't see anything," Black Star said. 

"Yeah, looks like he doesn't have anything here," Soul said. "So, now what?"

"Why don't we go back to his lab and look around--" Kid stopped mid-sentence. Before Soul could ask, he could hear two voices, male, coming closer from the hallway. 

"Crap! We can't be caught in here!" Um..." Soul looked around, and found a closet. "There! We can hide in there ‘til they leave!" 

"There's no way the three of us are gonna--ah!" Black Star was grabbed at the scruff of the neck by the other two, and the three squished into the closet, closing the door just as the office one opened. 

"Your elbow is going into my stomach!" Soul hissed to Black Star.

"Yeah, well, you're breathing on me, and you should brush your teeth more often!" 

"Both of you need to shut up before we're caught!" Kid said. "Listen!" he said before the other two could react, and pushed open the door just barely so they could hear the two voices. 

~*~

"…Your concerns are unfounded," Stein said, pouring a cup of tea into an available cup. 

Sid, the zombie teacher and meister, was half-sitting on the counter near Stein. "It's not just my concerns, Stein. There have been rumors going around about why you of all people have not been teaching your classes like you are supposed to be. "

"Any extremely colorful ones I'd want to hear?" 

"Stein, this isn't a game! It's only a matter of time before Lord Death is brought into this--"

"I'm certainly not going to be the one to 'bring' him into anything. Are you Sid?"

The zombie gulped, allowing a twinge of the old fear to well up. However, since he was already dead, there wasn't much Stein could do to him...was there?

"How depressing, my own creation turning its back on me...." Stein said in mock sadness. Sid let out a long sigh. 

"I heard from Scythe that you may have been contacted by...a certain outside group."

"You should take everything that Spirit says with a grain of salt. You of all people should know that." 

"Believe me, I would. Normally if Scythe were to come to me with this, I'd already have the salt shaker in my hand. But you've been acting so weird lately, even weirder than usual, that I can't help but wonder if he was onto something. So let me ask you straight: Were you contacted by a group, namely the Hellsing Organization, for some side project?"

Stein did not answer immediately, but took several sips of his coffee. The tension in the office was quickly compounded by the efforts of the three boys trying to hear every word. 

"That's awfully specific, Sid." 

"Don't try to play it off, I'm well aware of your history with them. So is Lord Death, and Scythe. Normally, I would care less, but when you're involving the very life of your students, then you've crossed a line. You are here to help the students learn the arts of Weapons and Meisters, but you can't do that if you are the one skipping class! What if you were supposed to discuss something this week, but since you were 'preoccupied' you weren't able to cover the material, and Maka or Soul find themselves trapped in the same situation? Without your guidance, they could be killed!"

Stein was quiet. Even Sid seemed a bit surprised at his own outburst. "Listen, Stein. If you can wrap up this project quickly, I can cover your classes for a day or two. Lord Death won't be too curious about the switch, with the Kishin and all. Deal?"

The mad scientist chuckled. "You are an interesting man, Sid. First your berating me, then offering me a deal that saves face. What's your game?"

"None. We need all the help we can get, but if you're distracted by side projects everyone suffers in the end. Also, I may be dead, but you are still Fraken Stein, and I'd rather have you with me than against me in any fight." The zombie turned and walked towards the door. "Just don't make me regret this later, got it?" Sid asked as he left and closed the door behind him. 

Stein chuckled again. "You're naivety is becoming, Sid. Cute, but I can't make a promise like that." Stein rolled his chair towards the closet, and the three boys' hearts quickened as he came closer. He reached out, and just when they thought he was going to open the door, he pulled a book from the shelf. He grabbed several more, and the noise of his shuffling covered up the sound of all three letting out their collective sigh. Putting a stack of books as tall as to his waist into the chair, he wheeled out of the room. As soon as he was gone, the three spilled out of the closet. 

"God, I thought I was going to die in there!" Kid growled. "You two need to learn better hygiene habits!" 

"It wasn't me, it was Black Star!" Soul snarled, cracking his neck. "I was in just as much pain as you were! That stupid book you were holding was digging into my back the whole time!" 

"Both of you are complete wimps! And anyway," Black Star looked at the door. "What in the world just happened?"

"I'm not sure, but I may have an idea," Kid said. "C'mon, let's go find the others and see what they think about the situation at hand. I have a feeling it's going to affect us soon enough." 

~*~

The boys found Liz, Patty, Maka, Tsubaki, and Crona in a secluded corner of the library. Maka and Tsubaki were reading a textbook, while Patty was coloring a picture and Liz was painting her fingernails. Crona was behind Maka, but was craning his neck to try and read over her shoulder. Soul couldn't help but feel torn between jealousy and pity for the demonswordsman. 

"Hello girls," Kid said, "and Crona." Crona, still a bit jumpy, promptly fell over in fright at the sound of his own name. "Don't do that! I don't know how to deal with people sneaking up on me!" 

"It's ok Crona, they meant no harm," Maka said cheerfully. 

"So, how did the search go?" Tsubaki asked. 

"Did you find the treasure?" Patty excitedly asked. 

"In a sorts. There's something real fishy going on with Stein!" Black Star announced, and with that the three boys described the encounter between Sid and the doctor. 

"So, I've got a question," Liz said. Kid looked at her. "We all have questions, Liz, but go ahead." 

"What was that group Sid mentioned? The whatsits Organization?"

"I think it was called the Hellsing Organization," Kid answered. "What about it?"

"Well, what is it? Has anyone here ever heard of it?" 

Everyone shook their heads. "I dunno, but I'm tired of all these mysteries!" Black Star said. "I say we go to Stein's lab and demand he tell us what's up!"

"Yeah, and how well did that work last time, Black Star?" Tsubaki reminded him.

"Sid's right," Maka said. "Whether we want it to or not, this may be very important to us later on. I say we go find out what Stein's up to. Who knows, maybe we can help him along so he can get back to his lectures." 

"Sounds like a field trip," Kid said. 

"Will there be lions and tigers?" Patty asked her sister. 

"I don't wanna go, that doctor is super scary, I won't know how to deal with him!" 

"Unfortunately Crona, nobody knows how to do that yet," Soul muttered.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Kids learn EXACTLY what happens when you distract Stein from his experiments....

"No, no, NO!" Stein slammed a fist onto the metal table, his frustration leaving a dent in the shining surface. "I don't understand the problem! What is not working this time?" He threw a scalpel across the room, where it stuck into the wall and quivered for a moment. Growling loudly, he stormed over to his sink and stood over it, unsure what to do. This was the first time in a long time he had been stopped in his experiment by factors not adding up like they were supposed to do. 

Even Sid's reanimation didn't give me this much trouble. Then again, his body, mind, and soul were all connected; I was simply transferring his consciousness to a higher plane. This is wholly different. He turned back to the shape under the bloodstained sheet on the table. I'm missing the connection between the mind and body. There's nothing the chip and my handmade body have in common, and everything I've tried has failed to bring them together. There has to be something!--

An alarm sounded, and he whipped around to see a familiar group of kids on his front step. "The kids again!" he snapped. "They need to learn that it’s not nice to interrupt people who are trying to get their work done!" A glint of madness crept into his eyes as he spoke, moving towards the front doors....

~*~

"De ja vu, anyone?" Soul asked as they stood around, waiting for Stein to come out. 

"There's something that doesn't feel...right," Maka said, looking around. For some reason, she was on edge. Waiting for a fight, she realized. She turned back towards Kid, who had his eyes fixated on the metal door, as too not get distracted by the odd-numbered stitches on the walls. 

Before anything could be said, the metal doors opened, but Stein did not appear. After a minute, and still no Stein, their curiosity got the better of them, and they all crowded around the doorway, trying to peer through the darkness of the lab. All except Crona, who stood behind a corner, facing away from the door, too afraid to face the doctor outright. Why did Maka bring me here? He thought to himself. She knows that I can't deal with a guy with stitches on his face!

"Um, hello, Dr. Stein?" Maka called out. Everyone leaned forward because they could hear a noise, but couldn't quite place it--whatever it was, it was getting closer--

Everyone jumped out of the way, just as Stein came flying out on his lab chair. The chair caught the small lip at the door, sending Stein falling onto his back before them. "Kids, you really need to leave now," he said quietly. 

"Not until you start giving us some answers," Kid said calmly. Liz and Patty nodded in agreement. 

"Tell us what you’re up too, or we'll make you tell us," Black Star threatened. Tsubaki leaned over. "Black Star, Stein almost killed you last time you fought!" she whispered. 

"Ha! I just let him win that time. This time's different though," Black Star responded confidently. Stein turned to him, glasses reflecting the moonlight, causing Black Star to gulp. 

"You let me win, is that right?" Stein started to stand-up, and Maka felt a breeze stir her hair. Her eyes narrowed. "Guys," she said, "I think it's best we leave the doctor now." 

"Why should we do that?" Black Star asked. 

"His soul is growing more and more irritated. The last thing we need to do is start a fight. We're sorry, Dr. Stein, we didn't mean to bother you!" 

Stein chuckled. "She's right, everyone. I am a little hot and bothered. But it's too late to back down now." He lifted his face up to look at Maka; her eyes grew wide when she saw the madness in his eyes. He's going to kill us! she thought. 

"You kids are so nosy; it's time I taught you a lesson about how to mind your own business! Ever hear that curiosity killed the cat?" 

Soul stepped in front of Maka, instinctually trying to protect her. Crona, who was standing off to the side, heard the talk, but couldn't make himself step forward. 

Just stay out of it! Ragnarok told him. The last thing they need is a little whiny weakling getting in the way!

"You're not going to do anything, Stein, so stop playing around!" Black Star said, trying to call the doctor's bluff. Stein turned--

"Black Star, watch out!" Maka called--

\--and Stein shocked him with his soul wavelength. Black Star screamed and fell unconscious to the ground. 

Everyone went on guard then. Liz and Patty transformed, as did Soul. Tsubaki was at Black Star's side, trying to wake him up. 

"We didn't come here to start a fight!" Maka said, causing Stein to chuckle. 

"You obviously did, and I'm only too happy to oblige you kids. Obviously you missed me this week, didn't you? I guess this would count as remedial class, but," he got into his fighting stance, "if you get an 'F' in this course, you die." 

"What is so important you would kill over it, Stein? What the hell have you been doing?!" Soul roared. 

Stein smiled. "Still curious, even to the end. How cute."

"Maka," Kid said, his guns on Stein. "What's the plan?" 

"I don't know! What's gotten into you, Stein? We are your students, we're not the enemy!" 

"You're right, you're not the enemy, but you kids obviously need a lesson about respect, and I'll only be too happy to teach it too you!" He lunged at Maka, who swung Soul at the rampaging doctor. Dodging the blade easily, he came up under her and grabbed the handle, shocking both Maka and Soul with his wavelength. 

Kid jumped to the side and started shooting at Stein. He was able to dodge the bullets easily, running towards the reaper at lightning speeds. Catching Kid in the stomach, he blasted him with his wavelength. "KID!" Liz screamed as she fell away. 

Maka was slumped on the ground, but started forcing herself to stand. Soul asked "You ok?"

"I've been better," she admitted, feeling faint. What are we going to do! Stein is really going to kill us, and we can't even stop him!

Stein looked over at her, and smiled. He began tightening the screw in his head as we walked towards her. As he stood over her, his grin grew even larger. 

CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.

"Time to die, little Maka!" 

~*~

"Time to die, little Maka!" 

"Bloody Needle."

Stein saw the spikes coming at him, and dodged to the side. Black spikes landed at Maka's feet, forcing her to scuttle backwards. Crona stood there, looking as scared as ever, with Ragnarok in his sword form in one hand. Blood was dripping from his free hand; he had used the blade to cut open his palm so he could fling the black blood at Stein. 

"No one hurts Maka," Crona said calmly. 

"Nice timing," Soul coughed, finally able to speak after the shock of Stein's attack wore off. Maka nodded. "Thank you, Crona!" 

"Why didn't you do that earlier?" Tsubaki screamed. "Black Star's badly hurt because of you!" 

Crona lost the confident look he had, and seemed to change back into the fearful child. "Hey, little bitch, you're even lucky we even came to your rescue!" Ragnarok yelled back. 

"It doesn’t matter now," Stein said, tilting his head. "I'll just have too--" he stopped midsentence. He looked at Crona, then at the blood pooling under him. Black Blood...that's it! That's the missing link! 

"It looks like I'm going to need your blood in order to finish my experiment," Stein suddenly stated matter-of-factly.

Crona paled, a feat to accomplish in of itself. "My-my blood?"

"Yes," said Stein, talking a step towards him. "A few liters should do it. If you come willingly, I won't kill you." 

"You won't hurt Crona!" Maka snarled. She grabbed Soul and whipped him over her head, bringing him down on Stein's back. Stein grabbed the scythe and used her momentum to lift her over his head and slam her into the ground at his feet. Maka couldn't move; did Stein break her back?!

~*~

"Kid, you've got to get UP!" Liz yelled, but the reaper was still unconscious. She finally turned back into her human form, Patty following her example. The two girls knelt beside their fallen Meister. "Patty if we don't wake him up the others may be killed!" 

"I've got this!" Patty said. She kneelt down and grabbed Kid by the collar and lifted him up. "Wake up, Kid! Move your ass!" she snarled, and slapped him across the cheek. 

Kid woke up with a start, the pain in his cheek shocking him awake. "Liz, Patty, what--?"

"Save Maka and Crona!" Liz said, both girls changing back into guns.

Kid looked to see Maka on the ground, with Soul tossed away to the side. Black Star and Tsubaki were out of the fight as well. It was just Stein and Crona, the latter holding the demon sword loosely in his hand. 

~*~

"I don't want to die," Crona said, "but you can't have my blood either. Lady Medusa will be very angry if she found out you took it!" 

"Medusa's dead, and I killed her," Stein calmly stated. Crona looked at the doctor, his eyes wide with fear. But--but she was so strong! If he killed her, I can't win! Crona looked and saw the kids scattered around, and when his eyes fell on Maka's bruised body he felt his resolve grow. "You hurt my friend, and for that alone you will die," he said. 

"Come on, kill me then!" Stein snarled. 

"Ragnarok, Scream Resonance!" 

The scream that filled the air was gut-wrenching, but had little effect on Stein. As fast as a blink, he was before Crona. Before the demonswordsman could react, Stein had grabbed his arm and punched him in the gut hard enough for Crona to vomit blood and pass out. 

Maka was able to open her eyes after several minutes, only to see Stein fling the boy's thin body over his shoulder. "Not....Crona...." she gasped. 

"STEIN!" The doctor turned to see Kid back up, guns centered on him. "Put Crona down!" 

"Sorry Kid, I can't do that. Not with my experiment so close to being finished." Stein got behind his chair, and kicked it as hard as he could, the chair going right for Kid as high speeds. Kid at that moment let loose with a barrage of bullets, but he was forced to dodge the chair as it flew past. He looked up to shoot again, but it was too late. Stein was gone, with Crona as his prisoner, inside the odd-numbered stitched building.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stein tries his hand at this whole "Creating New Life" thing.

Chapter Six

Kid slumped to the ground, the gut-wrenching feeling of defeat washing over him in sickening waves. It had been a long time where he was unable to stop any enemy, but this time was different. This time, as he looked around at the battered and beaten bodies of his friends, he felt like complete and utter shit. 

"I'm nothing but trash!" he moaned. Liz and Patty transformed back to their human shapes. As Liz looked around at the carnage, she wasn't even sure where to start. Even Patty looked around with a frown. "What went wrong?" she asked Kid. 

"Get up, Kid, we've got to help them!" Liz said. 

Kid turned to look at her with an eye. "Help them? Help who? I couldn't do a damn thing just now, and I'm the son of Death himself! What exactly do you expect me to do, Liz?!" 

"Something besides sitting around and moaning over yourself! Get over this self-pity; we've got bigger things to worry about!" She snapped back. Kid jumped up and he and Liz started to have an intense staring contest. 

"Break this up!" Someone called out to them. Kid, Liz, and Patty all turned to see a figure emerging from the mist of the graveyard. Liz screamed and hid behind her sister. As Kid tried to stand his ground, he saw it was his father's Death Scythe. 

"Scythe!" Kid called. "What are you--?"

"I could feel the clash of soul waves from the academy," he said. "Also, I was in Lord Death's Study when I saw the fight start to happen. What the hell happened--" He stopped right in his tracks when he saw Maka's unconscious body sprawled on the ground. 

"MAAAAKAAAA!!!" Spirit flew over to his daughter and sunk to his knees beside her, unsure what to do. It was obvious that he wanted to hold her to his chest, to cradle her like a baby, but the extent of her injuries was unknown, so moving her may have caused more harm than good. 

"STEIN!!!!!!" Spirit stood up and faced the building, roaring in anguish. "IF YOU TAKE AWAY MY DAUGHTER I WILL KILL YOU!!!" 

~*~

Crona's whole body pulsed in pain as he tried to crack open an eye. It was very dark, wherever he was, and he was sitting. He tried to move his arms but they were as heavy as lead. Fear snapped him into full awareness when he realized it wasn't that he was too tired to lift his arms. 

He was strapped into a chair.

He couldn't move his arms, legs, or his body in general. 

And there before him was a man in a long white coat.

A white coat with criss-crossing stitches all over it.

And he was turning a large screw in his head. 

Crona gasped a little, causing the mad doctor to turn to look at him. A grin spread across the doctor's face. 

"You're awake." Stein said with a smile. "Excellent. We can begin the experiment!"

"Wha-what experiment? Why are you looking at me like that. Let me go, please, I didn't do anything wrong!" 

"I agree, you didn't do anything wrong. If fact, you are perfect for what I need."

"Like....like my blood, right?"

Stein nodded, and stepped aside, allowing Crona to see what the doctor had been tinkering with when he was turned. It was a simple metal table, but there was a body on top of it. The grayish tinge of the skin made it clear that the body was dead, but not too far gone yet. From what Crona could see, the body resembled a woman's, with stitches across her chest, arms, legs. Her hair was busy and black, like the bristles of a broom, and stuck out in every direction. 

"Who is she?" Crona whispered. 

"That's what I want to find out, and I believe your blood is the key. I just need a small sample to begin," he said, reaching around and picking up a needle and syringe as long as Crona's arm. 

"NOT THAT!!! NO NO NO NO NO!!!" Crona screamed, trying desperately to squirm away. 

"There's no point in trying to move, I used Soul Sutures to keep you immobile." Stein glanced at the syringe and sighed. "I supposed I don't need that much...not right now, anyway." He tossed away the large monster and pulled out a much more reasonable-sized one as he stood over the moving boy. 

Crona's eyes glazed over in fear as Stein moved down, and forced the sleeve up his arm, revealing alabaster-colored skin. "Just a bit of pressure," Stein said, never taking his eyes from Crona's, keeping the boy's gaze on him and not on the needle. He gasped, the black liquid filling the small canister. "That hurt!" Crona whimpered as Stein finished. 

"Don't be such a baby," the doctor said, slapping a band-aid over the puncture wound. 

Stein held the syringe up to the single bulb hanging over them. The liquid was thick, almost unyielding, yet seemed to reflect the light instead of letting it pass through. That would explain Crona's pale skin despite the black liquid pulsing through his body. 

"Excellent. Truly marvelous. I applaud her genius, I truly do." 

~*~

"Stein's not one to simply leave a window open for uninvited guests to just 'drop in,'" Scythe explained to Kid. "Unless he wants us too, there's no way we can get in to stop him."

"There has to be something! I refuse to give up now, especially now that Crona's in his gasp," Kid said, looking at the building. "We can't blast our way in, can we?"

"Even if we could, I refuse to even allow it. The blast could hurt Crona, or kill both of them." Scythe looked down at the kids, who had been gathered together by the four left standing. "We need to worry about them, first." 

"Is Sid on his way?" Kid asked, and Spirit nodded. 

"He should be here in just a few moments, with a few others to help get everyone back to the academy."

"We can't wait that long, who knows what Stein's doing in there!" 

"I know that, better than you know. The only consolation is that as long as he remains useful, then Stein won't do anything to kill him. However long that is, though...."

"Kid! KID! Hiya Kid!" Both males looked up to see Patty on the roof of the large building, Liz giving her a thumbs-up sign from the ground. 

"How'd you get up there, Patty?" Kid called. 

"Liz threw me in weapon form! Hey, can you see me? Do I look really tiny up here or what? Hahaha!"

"Liz, why did you throw your younger sister up on top of the roof?" Spirit asked. 

"A hunch," the older girl said with a shrug. "I thought that if there was a window up there, or maybe a chimney or something, we could find a way in." 

Patty leaned over the edge of the building and waved at them. "Hey sis! There's a window in the roof!"

"A skylight? Liz, you're a genius!" With a flick of his wrist, a skateboard appeared under Kid's feet. He hopped onto it, and flew towards Liz. She transformed into a gun just as he went past, and he flew up. 

"Be careful, Kid! Your father will kill me if you get hurt too!" Scythe called out as the boy disappeared over the roof. Just what the hell is going on Stein? What are you doing that almost had my darling Maka killed?!

~*~

Kid and Liz made it onto the roof with no problem, and he spotted Patty on her stomach, looking down into a skylight. She waved them over, but raised a finger to her lips. 

Making his way over as quietly as possible, Kid closed the distance fairly quickly, and crouched next to Patty, looking down on the scene below. 

Stein was standing between a metal table and a chair. In the chair was a slumped Crona, who seemed to be unconscious. On the table was a woman's corpse, pale gray and naked, with an IV line dip going into her arm. The IV bag was filled with black liquid. Black Blood. 

"What's he doing?" Liz asked, still in weapon form. 

"I'm not really sure. I think Stein's using Crona's black blood for some sort of experiment involving a corpse...." Kid's voice trailed off as he saw the corpse's hand twitch, then curl into a fist. "Scratch that. Stein is reanimating a corpse using the blood!" 

Thunder sounded overhead, so loud with its BANG!! that Kid almost fell through the glass in fright. He looked up to see angry black clouds rolling over them. How did he not notice such a powerful storm until just now?! The wind was whipping around, almost blowing away Patty's hat, and Patty herself. 

"We've got to get off this roof before we're electrocuted!" Kid shouted. Patty nodded and transformed, allowing Kid to tuck her safely away along with her sister. "Kid," Liz said, "what about--?"

Kid fell to the roof, hands over his head, as the lightning bolt struck the lightning rod only a few feet away. He looked up to see several more rods, sporadically placed on the roof, and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up with the crackle of the electricity in the air. "It's a minefield!" We'll never make it!

~*~

Stein heard the commotion outside with the storm, but could've cared less. Using samples of Crona's blood, he was able to make a more potent concoction of the blood's properties, and now had this mixture being slowly administered to the corpse. He saw the hand flex, and popped a celebratory cigarette in his mouth. "Just a matter of time before I figured it out," he said, looking up at the skylight with a grin. 

A grin that froze when the lightning bolt shot down from the sky, shattered the skylight, and smacked into the corpse's chest with the impact of a train hitting a melon. Falling glass fell everywhere, and several jagged pieces stabbed the girl in several places, including an exceptionally large piece that slashed her face right above her right eye. 

Stein, who had fallen to the ground, stood up and looked at the sky in disbelief. He looked at the girl's corpse, but disbelief hit him when he saw that the skin was not melted, burned, or even scorched. His disbelief turned into amazement when her head turned and the corpse's remaining eye, emerald green and shining, bored right into the doctor's own. 

Moving slowly, drowsily, the corpse sat up. Swinging her legs over the side of the table, she moved slowly, and rotated her wrists, ankles, moved and flexed everything. She pulled several large glass shards out of her chest and legs with little effort, her face contorting in pain and disgust as she did so. 

Finally done, she looked up at Stein, and smiled in a confused manner. "Who are you?" she asked, voice spiced in a German accent.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Kids learn about Stein's past with the Hellsing Organization

Chapter Seven

Maka's eyes finally opened. It took several moments of concentration and twinges of pain to convince herself that she needed to open them; part of her mind simply wished to go back to sleep, especially when the pain in her back and arms started to grow more powerful. 

The first thing she saw was her father, hunched over in a small chair at her bedside, clearly asleep. From the rumbled clothes and ruffed red hair, it was clear he had been there some time. It was one of the few times she was glad to see her father. 

"Papa...." she whispered. The sound of her tiny voice so suddenly jerked Spirit awake, causing him to fall to the floor in surprise. 

"Maka! Oh, my sweet little girl, Daddy's here! Are you ok, how do you feel pumpkin?" Scythe grabbed her hand with tears streaming down his face. 

Maka turned her head, not wishing to see her father during such an embarrassing display. "Where's.....Soul?"

Spirit melted into a disappointed puddle of ooze. "Maka, why can't you just understand how much I care for you, why can't you at least acknowledge my attempts to be a good father?!"

"Calm down, old man," said a familiar voice. "This just means that Maka prefers to hang with the cool crowd." 

Maka smiled as she saw Soul leaning against the doorway to her hospital room. Her smiled faded when she caught sight of the navy-blue arm sling on his right arm. 

Soul, catching her glaze, rolled his eyes. "Don't worry, I'm fine," he promised. "The doctors are paranoid, that's all. They're just making sure I'm ok." 

"They're not paranoid, Soul," Scythe said, seriousness woven into his voice. "You just don't realize how damned lucky you kids were. All of you."

All of us..."Papa, where is everyone? Are they ok? What happened?"

Soul pointed his thumb out behind him, down the hallway. "Black Star was the first let out. Tsubaki was unhurt. Kid, Liz, and Patty helped your old man--"

"I'm not THAT old, dammit!--" 

"--and Sid brought us here. I got out a day or two ago. And Crona...." he trailed off, and looked past Maka. With great effort she turned her head, to see the pale boy in a bed beside her, hooked up to several machines that were beeping softly. 

"Crona..." Tears fell unabated down her face as she looked at her friend. "I didn't mean...to let you get so hurt...I'm so sorry!" 

"It's alright, Maka," Scythe said, holding his daughter's hand. "Crona's not really in such bad shape. The problem is that he was missing a lot of blood, but you can't exactly give just anyone a black blood transplant. His body is slowing making more to replace what was lost, but it's taking a while, so they decided to be safe rather than sorry." 

Tears of sadness quickly changed into tears of anger, of hate. "Papa," Maka said, her weak voice gone and seemed to change into steel, both cold and unyielding. "What the HELL is going on with Stein?" 

Spirit sighed, but he nodded. "Soul, go outside and let them in. There's no point in telling the same story multiple times." 

Like a ghost, Soul was gone, but he returned just as quickly, followed by all her friends. Kid, Patty, Liz, Tsubaki, and Black Star quickly filed in, all giving her hugs or high-fives for being awake, and found seats wherever they could. Maka gladly scooted over to allow Soul to sit on the bed beside her. Kid and the two girls sat on the empty bed next to her. Black Star and Tsubaki stood against the wall, both with arms akimbo. 

Scythe grabbed his chair and turned it so he could sit backwards in it. 

"So," he said. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything," Maka said. 

~*~

"Stein? How do you feel?" Lord Death asked. 

"Like absolute crap, sir," Stein answered. He was standing before the Reaper in just his shirt and jeans, with his arms shackled in front of him, connected to a chain to his ankles. His head pounded and itched: he could feel his screw coming lose, but the shackles did not allow him enough length to reach it. 

"I'm sorry about the shackles," Death said, "but it is for both of our safety. Do you understand?"

"Yes." The pulsing was like a bad hangover, but he knew that this was not the time to be whining over a little discomfort.

"Good. Now then, I want you to tell me everything Stein. What have you been up to that almost made you kill several DWMA students?"

~*~

"You kids know that the DWMA was formed to train weapons and meisters against witches, and unfortunately, the now-alive Kishin. However, these threats aren't the only supernatural enemies humans have come into contact with. There are other organizations out there to deal with these other threats. 

"Like vampires?" Soul asked quietly, remembering Stein's odd class lecture that seemed so long ago. Scythe nodded. 

"Mainly. Vampires account for most of the trouble. One particular group known for its zealotry is--"

"The Hellsing Organization," finished Kid. 

Scythe glared at him. "Who's supposed to be telling this story?!"

"Please continue," Kid said, waving him along. 

Sigh. "Yes, the Hellsings. They've been in the business of vampire slaying for about a hundred years or so, beginning the grandfather of the current family head. His name was Abraham Van Helsing." 

"What does an old geezer have to do with the crap with Stein?" Black Star mumbled. 

"It's a little complicated, but here's the simplest version I have:

"Ever since he was young, Stein has been a genius when it comes to anything biological, technical, and the use of soul waves in battle. And it was this genius that had him targeted by a young woman right after he graduated from the DWMA."

Spirit paused, remembering the twelve-year old blonde who talked and behaved like an adult, recruiting Stein for her own nefarious purposes. 

"Stein was approached by Sir Integra Hellsing when she became current head of the Hellsing family and the Organization, at the tender age of twelve. She has a particular need for Stein's...expertise." 

"What was it she wanted?" Maka asked. 

"The reason for their power against vampires comes from an unexpected source: the Hellsing family has a 'pet' vampire, whom they named 'Alucard'. He is mostly responsible for the carnage against the living dead that the group is infamous for. He is instrumental in destroying his own kind." 

There were murmurs of surprise at this information. "Why would he do it? Kill his own kind like that?" Maka asked. "Why not escape or kill his master to free himself?"

"I don't know the whole story, but I do know this: After Alucard was resurrected as Integra gained power, the magics that had been keeping him in check were starting to show signs of the magic's true age of over a century of heavy use. Integra needed someone with the genius-or madness, I should clarify--to come up with the new locks to keep the vampire under her control. Stein came up with what he called 'The Cromwell System,' which combined science and magic to make Alucard succumb to his Master." 

"Sounds pretty awful," Tsubaki said. 

"Stein would've probably stayed at Hellsing, but after he made an attempt to dissect Sir Integra, and in doing so was forbidden to be within the group. However, every once in a while, Integra will send little side projects for Stein to work on. This time, however, things got waaaay out of hand." Everyone turned their eyes to Crona's unconscious form. 

"No kidding!" Soul exclaimed, pointing a thumb at Crona. "So what did he want with Crona?"

"From what I've found out, Integra sent Stein a computer chip-like device to examine, but it was during his overview that he realized to fully understand the chip he needed to implant into a body."

"The corpse on the table," Kid said, starting to put the pieces together. 

Scythe nodded. "Somehow, Stein found out that Black Blood had the perfect properties to reanimate such a creature, and that, plus the lightning storm, did their job all too well."

"Wait, so Stein tried to bring back a corpse with this chip in it?" Maka asked. 

"Stein didn't try anything. The experiment worked. The girl that was reanimated seems to have no memories, or seems to not know any information that could have been contained on the chip. She's alive, and we have her currently in the tower until we know what to do with Stein." 

"What is going on with the doctor?" Liz asked. 

Scythe turned to her. "He's currently on trial, explaining his behavior to Lord Death himself. If Death feels that Stein is too great a threat, he will be executed." 

~*~

"So, you reanimated a soul in a computer chip, without thinking through the consequences of your actions or of the damage you might do to others who inadvertently got in your way? That's not like you Stein," Lord Death said in a disappointed tone. 

"I will admit, I didn't feel very...in control of the situation. It just spiraled into..."

"The hands of Madness?" Lord Death finished quietly. "Stein, are you blaming your actions on the Madness Wavelength?"

"Not blaming, but it may have had some effect," Stein said, his tone subdued. "It's only now that I see my mistake. I understand if you decide to have me taken care of." 

"You're not getting off that easily, Stein!" Both Death and Stein turned to see Spirit striding up the hallway, looking extremely pissed. 

"Scythe, this doesn't concern you--" Death started, moving towards the weapon, but Scythe, in a display of complete disregard for his master's orders, strode right past him without batting an eyelash, and pulled back his right fist as far as possible.

SMASH!

Stein stumbled backwards as Scythe gave him the most powerful right hook he'd ever had. Spirit was panting a little, having put every bit of energy he had into the blow. Stein smiled, and spit out a small wad of blood. "Feeling better?"

"It would take a hundred blows to make me happy, but I guess this one will have to do," the death scythe snarled. "But knowing that you took that hit without putting up a fight is also pissing me off! Do you think I'm so weak I can't draw your blood without you giving me such a wide opening?!"

"If it helps, he was shackled. He can't exactly defend himself that readily," Lord Death said. 

"I almost took your daughter from you, so I guess a sucker punch my way is a fair trade." 

"Don't think that playing the victim is gonna get you off the hook that easily," Scythe snarled. "If you really didn't have any control of the situation, Maka, Soul, and the rest of the kids would be dead now, and you know that. It was you, realizing that you were losing it, and cut that fight short, leaving them alive. So don't just try to slink off with your tail between your legs like a dog to go die in the woods!" 

"Scythe, if I didn't know better, I would say you are advocating for Stein's release," Death speculated. 

"I am," Scythe said, staring right into Stein's own eyes as he did so. "Stein's never been the most stable person, but he knows the line and when and where to cross it. Even if this episode is an effect of the madness, he was able to stay in control, somewhat. But there's one other thing," Scythe turned to Lord Death. "The real question is: can we really get rid of him at a time like this, with the Kishin revived like so? Personally, I think having Stein around is a calculated risk, and one we need to just accept." 

"Hmmm. You do make a point...." Death said, turning to Stein. "Your thoughts, Stein?"

"If Spirit wants me around that badly I guess he's having a run of hard luck with the ladies," Stein said, causing Scythe to fall to the ground in disbelief. "However, I will admit that I'd hate to die like a traitorous dog."

"We have really no choice in the matter," Death said. With a snap of his large white fingers, the shackles vanished. Stein took turns between rubbing his wrists, and rubbing his cheek. 

Scythe, shook out his hand. "Ow," was all he could say.

Stein chuckled. "Hurts taking pot shots when in your human form, doesn't it?" He started walking away. 

"Where are you going?" Death asked. 

Stein paused. "I'm going to check up on the girl. Then, I'll contact Sir Integra and give her my report. After that, I'm going to apologize to the kids for my actions." With that, he was gone. 

Death leaned over towards Scythe. "Does he still have the hots for Sir Integra?"

Scythe paled. "I hope to god not, for his sake, at least."

~*~

When the door opened, the young woman stood from where she had been sitting on the bed, her suspicious gaze turned into a small grin when she recognized Stein. He pinched the cigarette from his lips. "How are you feeling?"

The girl shrugged. "I dunno, zhe same? At least zhey gave me some clothes, so I'm not cold anymore." She was wearing a simple black t-shirt and army fatigues for pants. Her skin was still painfully pale, even now that she was alive. 

Stein exhaled his smoke. "And your eye?"

The girl touched the bandages covering her right eye. Despite the doctor's best attempts, the cut by the glass had been too severe, so the eye was removed. "Zhere's no pain, I think. I'm getting used to seeing vith only one pretty fast." 

"That's good. So, do you remember anything?"

The girl shrugged. "Nein, not a damn thing." 

"What about your accent? It's German, isn't it?"

“Ich weib nicht? I don't know?"

The doctor couldn't tell if she was speaking bilingually because it was natural for her to do so, or if she was trying to pull something over on him. 

Stein sighed. "Oh well. Maybe the soul's memories will come back at a later time." 

He addressed the girl. "Well, until then, you are going to stay here just a bit longer until we have this sorted out. Sorry about the wait." 

"It's alright, really! Danke, thank you, Dr. Stein." she said, bowing a little as he turned to leave. 

"So, you still can't remember your own name?"

She shook her head. "Nein!" 

"Guess that's something else to work on, as well." 

As Stein left, he did not see the hidden grin appear on the woman's face, nor did he hear her as she whispered, ever so softly, "Stupid human."

~*~

"Stein! What the HELL is wrong with you?! I asked you to simply examine that damn chip, and you go and implant it in a corpse to try and reanimate the soul locked within it? In what universe does that even make SENSE?"

Stein put a finger in his ear, as though to clear out some obstruction. "You told me to find out what I could about the chip, and to see if there was any way to destroy it. I couldn't find out those answers but simply staring at it. So yes, I implanted the chip. However, it may have been a waste of time. The soul that was reanimated seems to have no recollections of her past, of her name, or anything. The only clue I have is that she speaks with a German accent, but that's all I've discovered." He paused, and put a cigarette in his mouth. "So tell me, who's making these chips?"

Sir Integra was quiet. "The Millenium group," she answered quietly after a moment. 

It was Stein who looked surprised this time. "You mean to tell me that that chip was created by a bunch of Nazis?! That would have been nice to know, beforehand." 

"Not just any Nazis, but powerful vampiric ones, with potential powers of the like we've never seen. Stein, it's too dangerous to have that girl alive. If she is a freak, she may regain her memories, and her powers, at any time."

"I can't just go and kill her," Stein said. "I'll have to speak to Lord Death about the situation. I'll come up with something." Without a goodbye, Stein cut the wireless connection, leaving Integra still fuming at his seeming incompetence. 

"Damn, infuriating man!" She snarled, slamming a fist onto her desk. "I give him a bloody centimeter, and he takes a hundred kilometers! Bloody hell!" 

*******

Maka was reading a book when she felt Stein enter the Dispensary. She immediately froze, the first thing going through her mind was Oh god, he's come to finish me off!

"Hey Maka," Stein said, his head coming around the corner. "Do you think that I can--"

SMASH!! Maka's book flew into his face with full force. He stumbled backwards a step, his nose burning in pain. Looking up, he saw her cowering under the covers of her hospital bed. I've really screwed up, he thought. 

"You've got a pretty good arm, just like your father." Stein crouched down and retrieved the book on the floor. He strode over to the lump under the covers, and with a sigh placed his face where her head would be. "I've come to apologize." 

Maka's eyes poked up from the edge of the blanket. "You did?"

The doctor nodded, and held out the book for her to take, a peace sign for all intensive purposes. Maka emerged from the blanket and took back her book. "Sorry for throwing it, Professor." 

He waved her apology away. "Don't apologize. If I had been on the receiving end of my attack, I think a book to the face is perfectly fine payback." He looked over at Crona, who was still unconscious. "How's Crona?"

"He's been better," Maka said. "But Naigus says that it's just taking longer for the black blood to replace what was lost. He'll be ok." 

Stein shook his head. "I'm sorry for attacking you kids like that. I didn't mean to hurt you." 

Maka smiled. "It's ok! Papa explained what was going on, but I'm glad to see that Lord Death didn't decide to execute you." 

"You're father actually helped with that," Stein said. "What a strange man. I almost killed his daughter, and he comes to advocate my release." The doctor shook his head. 

"Professor Stein? What about the girl, the one you brought back to life? What's going to happen to her?"

Stein shook his head. He looked out the window of the hospital, to see rolling black clouds in the distance. "I don't know, Maka. I'm not really sure about anything at this point."


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Kids try to make friends with the new zombie student

Chapter Eight

Life at the academy began to settle a semi-normal routine. Maka and Crona were able to join their classmates back in the classroom after just a few short days of recovery. Even Stein was back to teaching his class, no longer late or missing his lectures because his work had been completed. In fact, it was sitting in the front row, in a corner farthest from Stein at the moment. 

Everyone knew her story, of being created at the hands of Stein, but no one seemed too bothered by this. The fact that her body put her age somewhere among the teachers' age also seemed to have no effect on the student's response to her because she had no knowledge of anything. It had been deemed that she might as well attend classes in a purely academic sense; unlike the students, she was there to learn and nothing else. Despite Stein's use of Crona's black blood, it seemed that she had no little Ragnarok hidden in her blood. 

Because she had no memory of her actual name, every called her "Cy," short for "Cyclops," seeming as she only had one working eye. 

Maka looked at Cy and was still unsure how she felt about the new girl. Part of her wanted to try and be friends with the girl, but at the same time she was apprehensive; after all, Cy's birth had almost caused her death. 

Crona did not seem so bound by the same feelings as Maka, for after class was over, he slid up to Cy. 

"He-hello, Cy," he whispered, looking everywhere but at her. "How-how are you-today?"

Cy turned, and smiled. "Vell, its zhe boy vith zhe little black demon. I am fine. How are you?"

Crona blushed, but before he could answer Ragnarok decided to appear. "I'm not little!" The black blood creature said, hands on what could be considered his hips. "You're just jealous of me and Crona because his black blood can hold such a powerful demon, and yours can't do shit for you! You'd be completely useless in a battle!" 

Crona was appalled. "I'm so sorry!" he squeaked, trying to hold a hand over Ragnarok's mouth the stop him talking. "He-I don't think that, honest--ow! No biting, Ragnarok!" 

Mumble mumble mumble, which translated to "Take your hand off my mouth or I'll eat it!" 

Cy chuckled at their antics. "You're right, I vould not be very helpful in a fight, but you don't look like you'd be much help, eizher."

Ragnarok was about to go for the woman when Maka and Soul appeared. Soul's Meister was able to distract the little demon by throwing him a candy, a jawbreaker the size of his fist. "Wow! Even the most flat-chested of girls can be nice at times," he whistled at he happily started to gnaw the candy.

"I hope you choke on that candy!" Maka snarled. 

Soul shook his head. "You'll never learn, will you, demon sword?"

Crona looked like he was about to cry. "I'm sorry Maka, he didn't mean it, and I'm sorry Cy, I'm sure he didn't mean it...."

Cy waved his apology away. "It is fine. I'm glad to not have such a veapon, he seems to be much trouble. I must be going, zhough, so please, all take care." With that Cy made her way to the door, heading back to her dungeon bedroom, classes over for the day for her at least. 

Maka watched the woman retreat, still not sure how she felt about her, but deciding that if Crona was going to try and be her friend, then she might as well give the previous corpse a chance. 

~*~

Useless in a battle, eh? 

Her fists seemed too sluggish, her punches lacking the power she could so clearly remember feeling before, in her original body. It was greatly irritating to have to train, all over again, to for hours on end, just to get back a taste of what she was before. 

Zhat little demon is going to be zhe first thing I kill vhen my power returns!

Master, please, don't get so vorked up, the male baritone soothed, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. 

Do not, (another punch, this one powerful enough to break ribs on impact, but still so weak), do not patronize me!

As if I vould ever do such a thing, the voice chuckled softly. So, have you been able to get anyvhere?

Nein, Cy thought, the sweat flying off her face as she practiced her dodges, her hooks, and jab-combos that she could remember, as fast as she could move. Zhe kid's blood zhat was used to resurrect me has a little demon in it. It seems to be able to appear both vhenever he chooses, or vhen it chooses. But I do not know how!

Zhere has to be a faster vay! Ve cannot stay here, punching imaginary enemies all damn day! Eventually, zhey'll figure out zhat you're lying, zhat you remember everything. But ve need to be making our getavay before zhat happens!

You don't think zhat very thought passes through my head at every moment? But zhe situation cannot be helped! We must stay under zhe radar, Krieg, until ve are truly ready. 

You heard Schrodinger! He came to us, as ve sat in zhis very cell, to welcome you back to zhe land of zhe living, and gave us zhe mission to find out vhatever vas needed to work our black blood, zhen to join the fight in Britain as the most powerful vampire in zhe Major's ranks! 

Cy remembered the conversation clearly, so she did not need Krieg to reiterate. Throwing her last punch, she fell heavily onto her thin bed, the frame threatening to break under such abuse. Her chest rose and fell painfully, her heart pounding away in rhythm with the dripping sweat. Everything burned, but it was a wonderful burn, the burn of both strength and life. 

Taking a few swigs from the water bottle on the bed, the cool water soothing a trail down her throat and to her stomach, Cy suddenly stood up, shook out her arms and neck, and said aloud "Alright Krieg, manifest yourself!"

"How do you propose I do zhat?" the voice asked. Cy rolled her eyes in annoyance. 

"How should I know? You're zhe black blood, you should know zhese zhings! Just, do vhatever comes naturally!" 

"Finally, some action!" 

Cy was used to pain, had been quite good friends with it both her entire lives, but this was definitely on a whole new level. Her very blood was being pulled out of her body as it burst from her back in an eruption. 

This was the first time that Krieg had been able to manifest himself, so he was quite proud of himself. "Vell, zhat vasn't so bad, nein?" he chuckled. Cy was crouched on the ground, trying not the fall over as the pain wave had hit. 

She cracked open one of her tightly closed eyes and glanced back to see Krieg's face for the first time. 

She has expected a face that looked like the little demon Ragnarok's, but this was totally different. The skin was black, yes, but that seemed to end the similarity. There was white hair, about shoulder length, that fell in such a way as to cover his left eye. The visible eye was white, with but a black iris, and his face held both a normal nose and mouth, but he had a thin white devil's goatee. Krieg grinned. "I'm ready to kill someone!" The black blood monster cried. 

Cy chuckled, despite her pain. "Maybe after you've grown a bit more." 

"Vhat?" Krieg looked down to see he was about the same size as Ragnarok's current form, which was not much larger than a young baby. "I'm not scary, I'm pathetic! Everyone vill die laughing at me before I get zhe chance to kill zhem!" 

Now pouting, Krieg disappeared back into his master; Cy was able to straighten up, the pain now fading away very quickly. 

"Perhaps zhere is a vay to make you stronger, like zhe training? I will find out, and then ve can kill everyone." 

~*~

If Crona was anything, he could be counted on as predictable. The next day, as class ended, he again slunk up to Cy, trying to work up the nerve to talk to her once again. This time, she was ready. "Guten tag, Crona," she said with a smile. 

"Um...right, hello." 

Ragnarok appeared as well. "Hello, failure!" he cackled. 

Cy had to resist the urge to lunge at the boy and demon, but it was extremely hard to do, especially while keeping a smile on her face. "Hallo, tiny!" 

"Tiny? That's below the belt! And I'm not tiny, just you wait until I eat some souls, then I'll be able to kick your ass without a problem!" 

"Eat some souls?" Cy asked.

"Lady Medusa was trying to turn us into a kishin, so we ate human souls. The more souls we ate, the bigger Ragnarok got...But we can't do that anymore! We are the good guys now, so no more human souls, got it?" Crona said to Ragnarok, trying to be the one in charge. 

Cy had to actually bite her lips to stop them from forming into a smile. Such a large piece of the puzzle had fallen into her lap with such little effort on her part! 

"I believe I em confused," she said, making boy and sword pause their argument. The only way to find out what she needed was to act naive. "I thought zhat if you ate a hundred souls, you became a scythe, as Lord Death explained, ja?"

"Wow, you're even dumber than I thought!" Ragnarok cackled. 

"Ragnarok, stop it," Crona growled, finally getting fed up with the black blood creature being so rude to the new student. 

"You're no fun....dopey heads!" the little creature said as he finally disappeared. Crona let out a sigh of relief. He turned back to Cy and smiled. "Sorry 'bout that," he mumbled, suddenly shy again. Cy rolled her eyes, not having the time to deal with this stupid boy all day. 

"So, zhe souls?" she prompted. 

“Oh....uh, that. Well, from what I understand....well you see...I,uh....Maka!" Crona waved a hand in greeting to his female friend. "Can you talk to Cy?" 

Maka had returned to the room, almost forgetting a book at her desk, when she saw Crona and Cy talking. Hailing her friend, Maka made her way over to the two, forcing down the repulsed feeling she had whenever she saw Cy. It did not take much for her to get a sickly feeling whenever she realized that Cy was a walking corpse, but unlike Sid and his blue-skinned body, something about Cy made her on edge. If only Maka understood how on the money her woman's intuition really was. 

"Hey, guys, how are you today?" she asked cheerfully, putting on as much an act as Cy. 

"Can you explain about souls?" Crona asked quietly. Cy nodded in agreement. Maka shrugged. 

"Well, what did you need to know?"

"Zhe souls. Zhe collecting. What is zhe purpose of zhis academy?"

"It's very simple," Maka explained, glad it was something easy. "A human that eats the souls of other innocent humans becomes an Evil human, on the path to becoming a kishin, or demon. If the Evil human consumes enough human souls, their soul becomes a kishin egg. And that's where us Weapons and Meisters come in." She curled up her arm, a sign of determination in her eye. 

"Meisters use their Weapons to collect those kishin eggs. If a Meister has their weapon consume 99 kishin eggs, or souls, then the soul of a witch, the Weapon becomes a Death Scythe, a weapon to be used by Lord Death himself, and much therefore much more powerful than other weapons."

"Ah, I see," Cy said, the gears in her mind beginning to turn with ideas to make both herself and Krieg more powerful. "And zhat is zhe purpose of zhis school, ja?"

"Exactly. The object of every student here is to make their weapon into a death scythe. It's a little daunting at first, but once you collect your first souls, it isn't so scary afterwards." 

"Ich nehme an. I suppose so," Cy said. "Danke, Maka, thank you. Now, if you will excuse me, I must be going on." She walked off, leaving the two friends behind. 

"I hope she's settling in," Maka said quietly. 

"I think she'll be happy here," Crona said, looking everywhere but at Maka. "I'm not as depressed as I used to be, so she should be ok."


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Integra asks for help from an unlikely source

Chapter Nine 

The Major removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, but only for a moment. The plan had been perfect, perfectly timed, to be perfectly executed, but not now. His whole damn operation had been put on hold, delayed for over a week, allowing those damn Brits to supply, stockade, get their plans in order, try to find a weakness in his fucking plan. All because of a goddamn vampire. Well, it served him right, for assuming that the vampire was only good for slaughtering helpless animals, and not thinking that perhaps in his wise, old age he'd picked up on some tricks. Dammit. 

The supplies that had been carefully stockpiled and reserved for the war; only the few last shipments, mind you, had been blown to kingdom come as Alucard had passed through. It was not the end of his war, oh no, but it made him pause, maybe even made some of his followers think him weak for holding back. But the Major had waited for so long, had done so much work, that he was not going to lose this game by charging forward blindly. Even short some supplies could be the turning point in the upcoming war.

He was not going to fuck up now, so close to victory. If a secured victory meant that he had a delay his plan, wait until he was truly ready, then that’s what he was going to do. Screw anyone who believed otherwise. He'd let the Captain eat them. 

~*~

Stein had turned in early that night, and so was deep asleep when his laptop's screen went from standby black to blindingly white, the loudest sounds of static cutting through the still night. He jumped, shocked awake by the noise in his sleep, and discharged an energy ball at his desk, missing the computer by only a hair. The image on the screen was pixilated, and the noise broke in several places, but he still recognized the person who called out his name.

"Stein, answer...this minute you...bloody fool!" the woman screamed between static outbursts. Integra?

He stumbled over to the chair at the desk, moving mostly be feel, his eyes having a hard time opening and focusing. He sat down heavily, and snapped. "What?! Do you have nothing better to do than call me at all hours of the night--"

"I don't have time for your bitching, Stein!" Integra roared, and that was enough to wake up the doctor. Integra never lost her temper. 

The image rolled on the screen, but when the image cleared, he saw that Integra was not her usual pristine self. Her face was haggard, lines creased her face around her lips and eyes, and her eyes....they were dull, tired.

"What the hell is going on?" Stein demanded, now fully awake. 

"Nazis! What the hell else?!" she snapped. 

"Why are you calling me? You're the leader of the Hellsing Organization," Stein said, imitating her accent. "Isn't this the sort of thing you have people on your payroll for?" 

"Most of my men were killed in action a week ago, for your information. What's left of the Hellsing group is made up mostly of hired mercenaries," she admitted. 

This is very, very bad, Stein realized. Integra was not one to mingle hired guns with her precious family group. She must have been truly backed into a corner if she had agreed to mercenaries. 

"What do you need?" He asked. Integra fell silent, and the picture pixilated. When it came back into focus, she was still silent, fuming almost. If the situation was as dire as it seemed, then they did not have time for the silent "it's classified" crap. 

"Your best," she said calmly. "And I needed them a few days ago. I can feel it, the calm before all hell breaks loose. That chip was the beginning of a war, Stein. There's going to be a Round Table conference two days from now." She paused before continuing. "Her Majesty will be present, as well. Do you think you can make it in that short amount of time?"

He was currently fighting off the shock of such a casual comment. The Queen? The situation was downright dire if she was to show up....

"No promises," he said, when he was able to speak again. "I'll talk to my boss, and my kids. I'll send word either way." 

Integra nodded once, the closest thing to a thank you Stein was going to receive from the woman. The picture broke up again, and when it finally corrected itself, she was gone. 

~*~

"So, if I'm to understand you correctly, you want permission to send yourself and up to seven students, including my son and his weapons, overseas into a possible war zone to help another organization eradicate a neo-Nazi threat? Is that right, Stein?" Lord Death asked, hands clasped behind his back, turned away from Stein. 

"Almost. They're not neo-Nazis, they're the real thing. Vampiric incarnations of the Third Reich," Stein clarified. 

"Ah, thank you for clearing that up," Death said, bouncing as he turned around. "And one more question? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!" he bellowed, his voice returning to his normal baritone of an age past. Stein seemed unruffled by the outburst. 

"Last time I checked, I was still somewhat mentally sound," the doctor said, pushing his glasses up his nose. 

"There's no way in HELL you're taking Maka, not over my dead body!" Spirit yelled, to which a loud "Reaper Chop!" silenced.

"Stein, I understand that Sir Integra is a friend of yours, but you can't risk the student's safety for a crush," Death explained. 

"Even though she is a total babe..." came Spirit's weak response from being nose-down on the floor.

"That's not what this is about at all," Stein calmly answered, rolling his eyes. "If Sir Integra loses, hell, if Britain loses this fight, how long before they come here? These vampires are augmented in ways I can't begin to describe, and they aren't following the usual rules of battle. We've got to put out this fire before it consumes the entire world. And what will we do if Asura gets his hands on the Nazis, or vice versa? Do you think our problems have just begun? Wait until that happens."

Spirit sat up, and shared a glance with Death, who shrugged. "He makes a good point, Spirit. If we can help and don't, then what is the point of the DWMA? We'll be nothing but a bunch of hypocrites."

Spirit crossed his arms. "Fine, but I'm going with!" 

"Fair enough," Death said. "And just who do you want to take with you?"

"Maka and Soul, Black Star and Tsubaki, and your son, Kid," Stein said. Spirit cocked an eyebrow. 

"If you're going to a fight, why not take Ox, Kilik, or Kim? They're some of the best fighters the DWMA has."

"If this battle turns sour, then our strongest fighters are still able to fight, if necessary," Stein said. "I want to leave them in case...well, as a back-up."

"And Crona?" Death asked.

The doctor thought for a moment. "Sure. He needs to earn his battle stripes at some point. Maybe he'll be a great asset." 

"Alright. I'll send out the announcement first thing in the morning. I can get Sparks to set up his plane to leave as early as possible." Stein thanked the shinigami and was about to leave when Death called after him. "Stein? You must make me a promise." 

"Anything, Lord Death." 

"I want my students to come back alive, and sound. Especially my son. Can you do that?"

Stein bowed. "I'll do all I can to keep them safe, but this is a war. Someone may end up killed, it’s just the way it goes." 

"Don't worry, Lord," Spirit said, stalking past Stein from the Death Room. "I'll make sure nothing happens to them." 

~*~

Cy had to put a hand over her mouth to stop from laughing hysterically. These people were so stupid! So naive, and now her plan was coming together. 

It did not take long for her to learn how to contact Lord Death, writing the numbers on the mirror, but she did not want to speak to the large, sing-song voiced idiot. She wanted to know what he was planning. So she practiced with the mirror in her dungeon room, learning how to open the magic window so she could hear and see all that occurred in the Death Room without alerting anyone to her presence, and it had paid off!

She had been trying to figure out how to meet up her Major on the battlefield, which was to be across an ocean and a continent to the east. The war should have started, but Schrodinger had explained that there had been a small hiccup, and the plan had been slightly delayed, so she had not missed the glorious battle to be. But here, she no longer needed to think of a plan. All she had to do was hitch a ride on someone else's....

~*~

Pat, pat.

"Ugh....."

Pat, pat.

"Mmhhh..."

SCRATCH!!

"OW!" Maka yelled, jumping up from her bed. Blair was sitting next to the girl in her normal cat form, licking a paw. "What the hell, Blair?"

"I've been trying to wake you up for a whole five minutes, Maka! I tried to be nice about it, but I wasn't getting anywhere." 

"It's the middle of the night, what could you possibly want?!"

"Not me," said Blair, her tail pointing towards the vanity mirror. "Lord Death. He needed to talk to you and Soul on the double. Something about a very important mission or some other boring thing." 

It must be pretty important for Lord Death to actually wake us up for it, Maka thought, trudging out of bed and towards Soul's Room. 

"Oh, don't worry yourself, Maka! I'll go wake up Soul, you want to be presentable for Death, don't you?" the cat said cheerfully. Maka picked her up by the scruff of the neck, clearly unhappy with the ball of magic fluff. It had not taken her but an instant to realize the cat had managed to insult her and try to flirt with Soul in the same sentence. 

"You're lucky I don't give you to Stein. I bet he'd love to see what makes a magic cat tick!" Maka growled. 

"Magic does, silly! Besides, I was just kidding! Don't be so touchy, Maka," the cat said, hoping the girl would put her down soon. Being treated like a kitten made her so mad, but she also knew that Maka's threat may not have been so empty.

Satisfied she had made her point, Maka put the cat down, and pet her for a moment, trying to smooth out the ruffled fur to little avail. She continued to walk to Soul's room, hearing Blair mumble all the way. 

Knock, knock. "Soul? I'm coming in!" 

The hallway light shone into the boy's room, showing that it was in a state of general cleanliness for a boy. Soul didn't mind throwing his dirty clothes everywhere but the hamper, but the rest of his room wasn't so bad. 

"Soul? Soul. Soul! Wake up, Soul!" Maka spoke loudly and forcefully, all the while shaking him. Finally, Soul's head emerged from under the pillow it had been hiding under. 

"What the hell, Maka? Whatever I did, can't you at least wait until morning to bitch to me about it?"

She huffed. "Stop making such a fuss!" 

"It's the middle of the damn night!" 

"Lord Death needs to talk to us! So get your ass up, slowpoke!" Maka punctuated her statement with a punch to Soul's arm. As he started whining about the attack, Maka ignored him and went over to his mirror. She blew on it, and spoke "42-42-564, when you want to knock on Death's door," and writing the corresponding numbers. 

Sure enough, the shinigami appeared in the mirror only a minute later. "Hello Maka! Fancy seeing you up so early. Getting ahead on your schoolwork?"

"It's the middle of the night, sir, and Blair said you needed to see us," Maka said tiredly, too sleepy to argue with Death. 

"Ah. And where is Soul?" he asked, moving back and forth to see over Maka's shoulders. 

"It's the middle of the night, sir," Maka repeated. 

"That it is, and excellent observation. As is the normal protocol, I would normally speak to you upon your return to the Academy in the morning, but I won't be able to do that because you won't be going."

"We're not going to school?" came Soul's muffled voice from the covers. 

"This mission that I'm sending you on is extremely important, and on a deadline. You need to be at the airstrip by eight A.M., understand? Don't be late, and pack for a few days. Good Luck!" With those vague instructions, the Reaper was gone. 

"I wonder what we'll be doing," Maka mused. 

"Must be overseas," Soul said, who had clearly been listening to the conversation. "Packing for a few days and all." 

"Maybe it has something to do with the Kishin?"

"Who knows? We'll find out in the morning, so can we please go back to sleep?"

"I don't know if I can," Maka admitted. "I'm too curious to sleep!" 

"Well then, get out of my room so I can at least get some sleep!"


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the DWMA goes across the pond to help the Hellsings with the upcoming war

Chapter Ten 

The sun had just risen over the distant mountains, the early morning rays glinting off the airstrip, making it looking like a straight river of gold in the desert. There was a plane already waiting at the end of the strip, its nose and propellers pointing towards the rising run. Maka and Soul rode towards at a moderate pace, but not fast enough for Maka, who glanced at her watch. Dammit, they were going to be late!

"Calm down, Maka," Soul yelled over the roar of the engine. "If we're gonna make a cool entrance, we gotta be a little late so everyone knows it’s us pulling in." 

"If that plane takes off without us on it, I'm going to pull your insides out for everyone to see," Maka threatened. 

It was all Soul's fault! He had been so stubborn to wake up that Maka actually had to send Blair in his room, a move that, though necessary, made her stomach feel a little sick just thinking about it now. 

He pulled the motorcycle into the small building that housed air traffic control for the DWMA, and carefully parked the bike. Maka was already off and running towards the plane, her overnight bag hanging off one shoulder and bouncing around as she ran. Soul made sure his bike was secure before breaking into a run himself. There was no way in hell he'd get left behind!

As she climbed up the ladder and into the small plane's cabin, she noticed that Black Star and Kid where also there, with their respective weapons. Stein was standing at the front of the plane, near the cockpit, and glanced at Maka. "Glad to see you could make it," he said with a thin grin on his lips. She bowed and apologized, but everyone on the plane knew that, if Maka was ever late to anything, that Soul was automatically to blame. As the boy made his way onto the plane, he received a head-slap from his teacher, before being asked to take a seat. 

There was a chorus of "Good Mornings," as everyone greeted the newcomers, and Stein closed the door to the cabin. It seemed as though everyone was aboard and accounted for. Kid and the Thompson sisters were in the last row, while Black Star and Tsubaki took up the third. Maka walked to the second row to see Crona there, looking particularly nervous. She chose the window seat to the left of him, and Soul sat on his other side. The first row was empty, which she assumed was for Stein and whatever weapon he was going to use on this mission. 

The plane was small, a little cramped. There were four rows of three seats each, which weren't the most comfortable things in the world, but they were not the worse, either. There was enough room to move up and down the plane one either side of the rows, and the small cabin windows allowed a small view but clear view. Maka had ridden on a few airplanes, but this one was different than the usual plane they would take for missions. This one was small, and sleekly designed, but she had noticed large humps on the bottom of the wings, but what they were she was not sure. The plane was not built for tall people, for Stein's head was bowed slightly, and it still touched the ceiling of the cabin. 

"G-good morning Maka, Soul," Crona said.

"Good morning, Crona!" Maka said, a smile on her face. "Why do you look so glum?"

"I-uh, I don't, I've never...." Crona squeaked out. Maka looked at him oddly.

"You've never been on a plane?" Maka asked, to which Crona nodded. She smiled. "Don't worry! It's not so bad. And I'll be right here beside you, so don't worry too much. This trip will be just fine, I promise." 

It was a promise made in vain when she heard: "Soul, why was my daughter late?" behind their seats. Maka's blood ran cold as she realized that--

"No way! What are you doing here?" she screeched. 

Scythe covered his ears, amazed her voice could reach that high. He had walked up from the back of the plane. "I'm working, sweetie, just like you." 

"NO WAY!! I'm not going on a mission with my father, no, no, NO!" Maka denied, unable to keep quiet. 

"Maka, that hurts! You'd think with an outburst like that that you didn't love your Papa...." Tears streamed down Scythe's face. 

"I don't, GET OFF THE PLANE!!"

"Too LOUD," Crona moaned, putting his hands over his ears. Even Soul flinched. 

"HEY!" Stein snapped, and the silence in the plane seemed to echo. "We don't have time for this! Now please, keep the family squabbles to a minimum, if you don't mind." 

Maka slouched in her seat, and Soul sighed heavily. Great, he was now forced to sit near a pissed off Maka, who could turn into a living time bomb if she was allowed to dwell on the fact she had to work with her father. Scythe, his feelings hurt once again, slunk to the row in front of them and slouched into one of the seats there. This mission was going to be horrid. 

"What exactly are we doing, Professor Stein?" Kid asked, to which everyone agreed. Maka was able to ignore her father for the time being. 

"I'll cover that later. Right now our pilot has a few words to say." 

At his cue, the pilot rose from his cockpit chair, and came to stand next to Stein, who was a full head taller than himself. They pilot was a young man with spiky, flaming-red hair, pale skin with freckles, and a toothpick hanging from his mouth. His simple black shirt, jeans, and flyboy leather jacket all seemed a size too big for his thin frame. Goggles sat on his forehead, with little twists and knobs on the sides. 

"I'm Shorty Sparks," he said, giving a salute. "And I'm to be your driver for this little field trip." 

"Oh my God that guy's so SHORT!!!" Black Star roared, laughing hysterically. Tsubaki tried to calm him down, but to no avail. "Please, Black Star, behave yourself!..."

THONK!! An expertly tossed wrench hit the blue-haired devil in the head, knocking him unconscious. Shorty growled as he made his way to retrieve the tool. "As I was sayin'," he said, "I'm to fly ya."

Patty was laughing hysterically at Black Star's limp form. "Again, again!" she cheered.

"How come Malcolm isn't flying us?" Maka asked. The usually good-natured pilot was the main pilot for any DWMA students or facility whose mission took them into foreign territory.

"He doesn't run hot like I do," Sparks answered simply, only confusing the matter further. 

"I have a few rules for you newcomers. One, insult my baby and you will find yourself sucked out of the nearest exit at 30,000 feet. Two, insult my driving and the aforementioned ejection will also occur. Three, don't touch anything that doesn't belong to you. That includes windows, door handles, and other passengers. Are we clear? Any questions? No? Good, we'll be shoving off then." With that, he disappeared into the cockpit again. 

"I'll be filling you in on our mission parameters when we're a little closer to our destination. The trip will take about 13 hours, so get some sleep if you can," Stein suggested. 

"That's one order I'll happily follow," Soul chuckled as he curled up his jacket to use as a pillow, then putting in a set of headphones that covered his ears. Stein turned from the students and took the couple steps to stand beside Shorty as he began an engine and systems check. 

"Behind the yellow line, please," Shorty said, causing Stein to stop and see the yellow line on the floor and arrange himself behind it. 

"Thirteen hours? That seems a bit fast," Stein said. 

"Just one pit stop in D.C. before making the jump over the Atlantic," Shorty explained, flipping some switches. "Lord Death said this mission was gonna be dangerous, so staying out of enemy airspace the longer the better." 

"How good of a pilot are you?"

"Very. But if things go well you'll never have to find out firsthand." 

~*~

The boxes rattled, shook, and threatened to fall onto her head as the plane made its (apparently) rough takeoff. Cy was already bruised from having to climb all over and around the supply boxes in the cramped space just to find her current hidey-hole, and was not looking forward to what other surprises the future hours would hold for her. 

It had been easy to find the plane, after asking around and playing dumb long enough. Getting into cramped cargo space had been a challenge, but not an unconquerable feat. The Major had better give her a promotion when she returned, the triumphant hero, with her little black warrior to boot. 

Well, at least she wouldn't be lonely during the flight. 

~*~

Shorty was able to pull into a small-town airport outside of Alexandria, near D.C. to refuel and make some quick fixes to the plane. Stein stood and stretched, the past six hours flying cross-country leaving him tired and stiff. Liz and Patty were stretching themselves, while Kid stood to go outside for some fresh air. Soul was listening to his iPod, and Maka was buried in a book. Crona had so exhausted himself with his fear of flying he had fainted, and was asleep. Black Star, who had regained consciousness unfortunately, ran outside much to Stein's relief, Tsubaki following behind. That kid needed to go burn off all the extra energy he could. 

He kicked Spirit in the shin, who had fallen asleep and was drooling onto his shoulder. The man jumped up, made sure Maka was unharmed, and also took a walk outside, probably to relieve himself. The airplanes bathroom was very small, and Scythe was slightly claustrophobic. 

After a few words with the pilot, Stein climbed back aboard the plane to find everyone back inside. Liz was doing her nails, and Patty coloring in a coloring book. Black Star was arguing with Kid over some sort of video game the two had been playing recently, some sort of fighting game involving rings, he wasn't sure. Tsubaki was sitting quietly, eyes closed, probably meditating. 

"Everyone," he said loudly, catching even Crona's attention, who jumped awake at the doctor's voice. The kids and weapons turned to Stein, listening intently. 

"Everyone, I guess now's a good a time as any, " he paused. 

"Are you finally going to tell us where we're going?" Kid asked, his yellow eyes narrowing at the doctor. 

"And what the hell we're doing?" Soul threw in, headphones hanging around his neck. 

Stein nodded. "We're going to England."

"Oh my god, they have some of the best shopping there!" Liz exclaimed. 

"Who cares about clothes? I want to beat someone up!" Black Star said, puffing up his chest in a heroic pose. 

"This is not an extracurricular field trip!" Stein snapped. "We're going to stop an invasion, help save the world." 

That one sentence sobered up everyone on the plane. "Who are-are we helping?" Crona asked. 

"The Hellsing Organization." 

The confusion was apparent on everyone's face.

Stein quickly told them everything. The chip, and who Integra had told him made them. How the group had been hiding in South America, and how they had been creating vampires with powers never seen before. And how, now that she was backed into a corner, she needed an assist. 

"But, Professor Stein," Maka said when he was done talking. "We don't deal with vampires, or ghouls. We fight Kishin."

"If you truly think about it, is there much difference? These vampires are, in a way, Kishin. Powerful, evil souls that were once human, that feed on their fellow man. Right now the problem is but a trickle, but there's a lot of effort put into these new vampires. This is but the trickle before the tsunami hits. And if we don't want to see our home fall to the threat as well, we need to help stop it in its tracks." 

Silence as everyone, even Patty, absorbed this. Patty thought for a moment, then raised her hand. "Professor? Are we going to die?"

"I don't know, Patty," Stein said. 

"Of course we're not!" Black Star jumped up. "We're from the DWMA! We kick bad guy butt every day, how is this any different? It just means that, the bigger they are, the harder they'll fall when they see me coming!" 

"No way, you're not going to get more than me!" Soul exclaimed, issuing a challenge to Black Star. 

"Whoever kills the least get to clean the school bathrooms for a month!" 

"Deal!" They shook on it. 

"Maka, I don't know to deal with vampires!" Crona moaned.

"Don't worry, Crona, it'll be a learning experience for all of us! If we stick together, we can do anything!" 

Everyone's attitude changed after that. The heavy air that seemed to permeate the plane when Stein spoke was lifted. This was no longer a suicide mission, but a game. Just another day at the office. Stein had to hold back a smile. Black Star was an annoying idiot, but he was very good at rallying his troops when he needed to. 

Spirit came back on the plane and fell into his seat. Stein could tell the scythe must have finished off his flask of liquor he kept on his person from the watery eyes and slight smell. Black Star may not have minded going on a mission with odds of a hundred to one, but Scythe still needed some persuasion, it seemed. 

~*~

"We’re coming in on our final descent!" Shorty yelled over the engines to Stein. "We'll be landing soon."

It was almost midnight, and everyone was sleeping onboard. Stein himself was rubbing his eyes as he walked up and down the side aisle, walking everyone up. The kids stretched and set their minds in order for the mission at hand.

"Air Control, this is Double S 341, repeat Double S 341," Sparks called. 

"This is Air Control, Double S 341, where do you think you’re going, over?"

"I have VIPS for the Penwood Opera, over. Requesting permission to land."

There was silence over the radio for a moment, the operator probably checking with his supervisor on where to send the little plane. 

"Copy that, Double S. You're expected, over. Sending you coordinates to land."

"Much appreciated, over." He plotted his course with the coordinate and realized he was being directed away from the actual airport. Looked like there was a private airstrip he needed to touchdown on. A bit of a challenge at night in unfamiliar territory, but at least it made him earn his wings. 

"Professor, where are we going? It's almost midnight," Kid asked. 

Stein turned to him and laughed. "For some, the day is just beginning! We're going to the Round Table Conference, a meeting called by the leaders of Britain's various supernatural-threat neutralizing groups when everything is going to hell in a hand basket. This is the first time the DWMA has been contacted for such a job, so make sure you look professional. 

“Oh, and one more thing. You'll also be meeting Her Majesty tonight too, so do the DWMA proud, okay?" Stein said casually.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the kids learn that Stein and Walter have a past. One that makes them hate each other.

Chapter Eleven

The single engine plane came in low and quiet, touching down on the paved airway and bouncing a few times with squeaking brakes. The plane creaked and groaned with the impacts, betraying its older age versus the brand new private jets parked in the hanger at the strip’s opposite end. Friction and gravity took over, bringing the plane slowly to a stop a few hundred feet from a group of waiting men. 

Walter stood calmly awaiting the plane to fully stop and deliver its unwanted cargo. Behind him milled six of the Wild Geese, the men still in desert fatigues and acting with mercenary attitude. He heard a loud exhale and smelled the familiar sting of tobacco before hearing a loud stomp, a foot grinding a cigarette butt into the ground. 

“We are guests here. Pick up that filter and dispose of it in the proper receptacle, please,” Walter quietly ordered, and heard an annoyed sigh as the young man did as ordered. 

With a mental sigh, Walter wished Captain Nathans were here. The old commander of the Hellsing soldiers had the uncanny ability to turn any street rat into a respectable member of Sir Integra’s private employ. However, the Captain’s recent demise in the Valentine Brothers’ attack* meant hiring new but experienced soldiers. Mercenaries were only as loyal as they were paid to be, but something was better than nothing. Since their commander, Captain Bernadette, was still to return from the field with Miss Victoria and Alucard, Walter had been forced to pick up the slack of commanding officer. It was a thankless task he did not care for. 

Normally during a Round Table Conference, Walter would be as Sir Integra’s side. He would be a source of wisdom if a vote was necessary on a course of action, and a source of calming influence against the other members. The RTC had a habit of bringing up old wounds between factions, but having the particularly volatile leader of Iscariot’s Section XIII, Maxwell, only heighted the tensions. The only reason Walter had agreed to meet Stein, and leave Integra’s side, was because of the Queen’s presence. Even old Father Anderson would not dare touch the British majesty in the middle of enemy territory.

The single engine was powered down, and as the blade spun slower and slower, Walter’s trained eye noticed the twin weapons on the wings of the plane. It struck him odd that plane was obviously older, but the mini-gun that hung from each wing with spotless and brand new, almost futuristic looking. Did Stein anticipate a fight?

Finally, the door to the plane opened downward, becoming a set of stairs for the passengers to exit. A tall man dressed in white was framed by the door. Walter felt the energy of the man radiate from the small plane in waves. He’s grown a lot stronger since he was last here. 

Stepping down, Walter heard a gasp escape of the Wild Geese. “Is that…does he have a screw sticking out of his head?!” someone frantically whisper. Though they sounded just as confused, his fellows affirmed the strange vision. Behind him came a red-haired man in a black suit who looked completely normal compared to the doctor, which made the sight even stranger.

Seeing Stein made a lump of anger rise in Walter’s throat, but he kept his thoughts calm and detached. It was Walter who had thrown Stein out of Hellsing seven years ago, when he had discovered the insane scientist hovering over Integra’s bed with a scalpel and a mad glint in his eyes. The fact that Integra had called back such a monster…it made the butler want to strangle something. 

The angry fire in Walter’s heart at seeing Stein was suddenly doused in ice water when a blonde girl in a school girl outfit and black coat walked down the steps, followed by a white-haired boy. Children?! Stein brought children to this…?

A blue-haired boy jumped over the stairs to land on the ground without a foot touching the stairs. Behind him trotted out a tall girl in a yellow outfit looking distraught at her friend’s antics. A tall girl and short girl wearing matching clothes and cowboy hats also exited, followed finally by a boy in a black suit with three white lines in his hair. 

Walter’s eyes narrowed. Integra said to bring your best…and those are children? He had to push away the disbelief. It was hypocritical, after all. He knew better than anyone that children could be the best fighters. Their imagination was not bogged down with ethics and rules. But still…are so many children willing to die in the upcoming battle? 

~*~

Stein was surprised to see the men in fatigues, but even moreso to see old man Walter was their escort to the conference. He kept his stitched up face blank and unreadable as he took a slow drag on the cig, Spirit standing beside him. The death scythe stared at his feet, hands jammed in his pockets.

A few feet away, the students were huddled around each other and talking in low voices to each other, but the focus seemed to be on Black Star. They were collectively almost drowning Stein in waves of nervous energy, and even indignant anger. That latter feeling came from Black Star. Probably has to do with the fact that I sewed his vocal cords closed with my Soul Sutures, Stein mused. 

A smile played on his lips as he remembered feeling his hand around Black Star’s throat just before exiting the plane. It was something he had wanted to do ever since meeting the boy, and now he had just cause for the action. They couldn’t afford for Black Star to run at the mouth in front of Integra, or God forbid the British Queen!

“Did you really have to do that?” Spirit asked, guessing what the grin on Stein’s face was from. “I mean, I can’t say I blame you, I’ve wanted to do that many times before…”

“We’re on thin ice right now.” He blew out a puff of white smoke, watching it float up into the crystal clear night sky above. “Do you really think letting Black Star be able to talk his nonsense to the Queen of England is going to put us on Britain’s good side?”  
“True. It’s just…you looked like you were having too much fun doing it.” 

Stein shrugged. 

~*~

“Black Star, did it hurt?” Soul whispered the blue-haired ninja. Running from under his chin and down his neck were black stitches, the Soul Sutures. Black Star started talking rapidly, yet not even a hiss escaped him. The only sound he made came from stomping his foot into the ground in frustration. 

“It’s like Stein turned the ‘mute’ button on on a T.V.!” Patty exclaimed in awe as she watched the performance. Her childish laughter made the entire scene vaguely more disturbing.

Liz shuddered slightly. “Stein’s creepy! He looked like he was having way too much fun doing that….” 

“It was necessary,” Death the Kid said quietly. Everyone brought their attention on him, and followed his yellow eyes as they gazed as the old man and the soldiers waiting for them. “This is real, and this mission is too important for a foolish, delusional boy to screw up. At least we know Stein trusts the rest of us enough to let us keep our voices.” 

Black Star was pouting. His arms were crossed because no one was paying him any attention. Without his voice, they could just ignore him. 

Soul turned to his partner, whose eyes were downcast and her skin a shade paler that usual. “Maka,” Soul asked her. “You okay?”

She glanced at him for a second, then swallowed nervously. “It’s just…so many things going on right now in my head. What about this mission? What if we get hurt?” She glanced at the plane. “What about Crona?”

“Sparks said he’d keep an eye on Crona. Remember, Stein said we couldn’t bring him with because he wasn’t really DWMA? He’ll probably sit in his seat and freak out until he gets exhausted and take a nap.” 

“What about Hellsing? We are about to meet the QUEEN OF ENGLAND, Soul!!! What if I embarrass myself and get thrown in a dungeon?” 

Soul threw his arm around her shoulders in a comforting manner. “Maka, look at Tsubaki.” 

Maka looked at the ninja girl, and saw that even with Black Star pouting next to her, she was smiling. She looked genuinely happy as she looked up into the clear night. A gentle breeze tugged her ponytail with it. 

“She looks happy,” Maka said, not really catching on to Soul’s meaning. 

“Maka, just relax, okay? Stein will play nice with Hellsing, and we’ll get some new souls to eat. We might even become death-scythes by the time this battle is over! There’s nothing to freak out about. We’ve done missions in other countries before. Just remember to be cool, like me.”

“You’re right, this is just another mission.” Maka smiled at her partner. “Thanks Soul.”

“No prob. Also, take a page out of Tsubaki’s book and enjoy Black Star’s current muteness. It will probably never happen again.” 

The laugh escaped from her mouth before she even had the chance to stifle it. Taking another moment, she looked at her friends, the weapons and meisters she had come to rely on and care for. They were extended family, and they were going to do this mission together. Stein was the most powerful Meister the DWMA had to offer, and her father, asshole he might be, was a Death-Scythe. They could take on anything. 

Still, when Stein put out his cigarette and started towards the welcome party, she couldn’t help but hesitate a little. This was going to be a completely new battle, and she could only hope she and Soul were up to the challenge. 

~*~

The tension in the air could be physically felt as Walter and Stein stared each other down. Everyone, even the Wild Geese soldiers who were inexperienced in reading souls, could feel the anger shared by the two men. Everyone shuffled awkwardly as they seemed to have a silent battle with just their eyes. 

Walter had always been wary of Stein, but finding the scientist prepared to perform surgery on his master had been the last straw. Walter had not just escorted the doctor from Hellsing property; he had escorted him from England completely. Here he was again, the look of detached confidence emanating from his insane soul as strong as ever.

Stein’s anger toward the butler stemmed from his failed experiment with Integra. Next to his surgeries on Spirit when they had been partners, Integra’s interrupted surgery caused Stein great anger. 

Walter broke the silence first. “Welcome to the Krauney Estate, current location of the Round Table Conference. Walter Dornez, at your service.” A little bow ended the introduction. 

Stein cocked his head, and for effect turned the giant screw in his head in response. He knew Walter well enough to know it would knock him off his high horse for a few seconds, even after all the time that had passed. 

An involuntary shudder ran through everyone present, but especially Walter. He had not even expected to hear that unholy clicking sound in his darkest nightmares…

A Wild Geese soldier gagged at the sight and sound, but he was able to cover it with a cough. The mercenaries refused to show the fear that they were feeling. It would ruin their reputation.

Stein opened his mouth to make a smartass remark to the old butler, but another sound cut him off. It was an unearthly cry, followed by a soft thump as something hit the ground hard. 

Everyone turned around to see Death the Kid on the ground, pointing at Walter with a trembling finger and sweat on his brow. “M-m-monster!” Kid squeaked. 

Everyone followed his finger, which was pointing towards Walter, who looked perplexed. “I beg your pardon?” he asked in a confused tone. 

Liz and Patty were at Kid’s side immediately. “Come on Kid, stop being weird and embarrassing!” Liz begged, while Patty simply laughed and patted Kid on the head. “There, there, it’s okay! Stein is way scarier than that old guy.” 

Walter looked back at Stein with an eyebrow raised. 

“Am I missing something, Stein?” Walter asked. In response, Kid shrieked “What’s wrong with   
you?! Why aren’t you wearing glasses like a regular human being?! Why isn’t there another soldier to follow you?!”

“I beg your pardon, young man?” Walter asked, clearly confused at the boy’s antics. Stein sighed in annoyance. This wasn’t how he’d hoped the first contact would go.

“Kid is a student at the DWMA, and one of our most powerful fighters. However, he suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with symmetry. Asymmetrical things upset him.” The doctor tapped his glasses. “It’s the monocle, and the fact that there are seven of you.”

The barest hint of a grin twitched at the corner of Walter’s mouth. “When Sir Integra requested you bring the best colleagues, I think she was expected more…” he looked past Stein at the still on the ground Kid. “…mature associates would travel with you.”

“You would know kids are the best fighters. And you would also know that the best killers have the strangest of quirks.” 

With the combined efforts of Liz and Patty, Kid was able to get through the fit and back on his feet. “Who wears monocles nowadays? They’re ridiculous!” he muttered to himself, dusting himself off. 

Walter looked at Stein. “Obstinate subordinates are a handful, aren’t they?” he stated, sounding worse for wear. Without waiting for Stein to respond, he continued, “The meeting is about to start, and you need to come with me.”

Walter turned to head towards a small metal shed, the size of a car port. The soldiers waited until the DWMA group passed and strategically placed themselves around the teenagers. 

Spirit lagged behind a few steps so he could walk alongside Maka. “Don’t worry, baby. Daddy’s here to protect you,” he whispered. 

Maka glared at her father. “I’m not scared!” she lied. The mercenaries made her nervous, almost as bad as witches and demons. Perhaps it was because these men were cold-blooded killers, just like the monsters she and Soul hunted together. 

Spirit gave her a look of a kicked puppy. “Maka, baby, why can’t you give me a chance?!”

“You used all those up every time you cheated on Mom. Go away!” 

Spirit fell to the back of the group and stayed there, staring at his feet the whole time walking. 

Stein kept up alongside Walter as they came up to the shed. “Walter, why did you meet us? I thought escorts feel under Captain Nathan’s duties.”

“Normally, yes. Seven days ago, Hellsing headquarters was attacked by a pair of vampires named the Valentine brothers. They brought with them an army of trained and armed ghouls. Sir Integra and I were the only survivors.” 

Stein’s face changed in surprise. “An attack on Hellsing? That’s a very bold idea.” 

“It was a very bold mistake,” Walter answered, his professional persona shifting aside for a moment for a personal one. Anger tinged his soul. “One for which we will make them pay dearly.” 

~*~

Most of the men of the Round Table Conference came from a wide range of background experience, but almost all had many years of dealing with the Occult under their belts. 

However, it was obvious to the only female member of the conference, Sir Integra Hellsing, that these experienced old men were…uncomfortable. And it was not because they were in the presence of the Royal Head of England. 

It was the man before her, dressed in red, with flowing black hair, blood red eyes, and very sharp canines, that made them increasingly nervous. 

Of course, they tried to play it off, but Sir Integra could see it in their shifting eyes and tapping fingers; it was their general body language that gave them away. 

All except Maxwell, the man in charge of Iscariot XIII; he just had an air of complete disgust around his person. He really did not want anything to do with “English Problems” but if the Nazi group Millennium was really behind the recent string of unholy FREAK attacks, he had no choice but to attend and help--orders were orders, after all. 

“You’re looking quite beautiful, your Majesty,” Alucard purred, grinning. 

“And you vampire, still so beautiful after so many years,” she sighed. “Time has not been kind to one of us.” 

“Lying won’t gain more flattery from me, your Grace,” the vampire countered. 

Sir Integra wanted to roll her eyes, but restrained herself. Funny how Alucard could tear his enemies limb from limb, them come here and flatter a woman so thoroughly. She almost believed he meant his words. However, she had seen the look he gained from killing, and believed nothing else brought him such joy. 

Alucard stood ready to deliver his report about the recent events in South America, with his sire Seras and the mercenary Captain Bernadette silently standing off to the side. Sir Integra wondered if Stein was actually going to show up on time. The screwy headed man had a bad habit of being late….

“Sir, they’ve arrived,” Walter whispered in her ear. He had materialized behind her without a sound. Sir Integra almost jumped; luckily Alucard’s frequent comings and goings through walls had trained her body to not jump when frightened.

“Thank God,” she sighed to herself. “He was on time, for once.” 

“They’re being processed now, Mum,” he said, and straightened up. 

“They?” she whispered back. A sinking feeling filled her stomach, which was already knotted up considering she was the one who had called the meeting, her first. 

A sigh from Walter caught her ear. “Stein brought some….students with him. Seven teenagers and another man came with him.” 

Integra didn’t speak, but her fingers clenched slightly, digging her nails into the wooden table before her. Anger replaced her nervous condition. “I will kill him after the conference!” she hissed. 

Walter listened to the earpieces tucked discreetly in his left ear. “Mum, they’re clean.” 

At the same point, Maxwell coughed. “We are supposed to be having a discussion about the recent South American incidents and irregular FREAK attacks, are we not?” Murmurs of assent agreed with the Vatican agent. The other men waited to get the meeting started as well. 

“My apologies everyone,” Sir Integra said smoothly, not a hint of anger or annoyance tainted her tone. “Before we start, I wish to explain a new development has occurred.” 

“Development?” asked Sir Irons, the President of the Round Table Council. He took a stern tone with Integra, as though they didn’t have time for such nonsense. 

“I’ve had a specialist brought in to address the Council on the matters-at-hand,” she said as calmly as possible. “He’s an expert in the field of Occult Technology and various black magics.” 

“Sir Hellsing!” barked Sir Penwood, an overweight nervous man who seemed terrified of kittens as much as the dark creatures his group attacked. “This conference is focused on British matters; we do not need an outsider telling us useless information we already know.” 

“I promise, Council members, he comes in good faith. If the nefarious doings recently are in fact due to the Millennium Organization, then we are dealing with an enemy with connections that stretch across the globe. One outside source should even the odds, should they not?”

Alucard narrowed his eyes at his Master, a twitch playing on his lips. Did Integra really bring him here…? This will be most interesting to see! Stein and I have business to finish.

“Outsiders bring security risks,” another man, General Walsh, head of Security. “With the Queen here, it can’t be risked.” 

Surprising his employer, Walter spoke up. “They’ve been cleared through security. I personally know the specialist. He is not a security threat. However, he and his party have cleared all the checkpoints without incident.” 

A few moments of silence followed as the other members spoke amongst themselves, deciding on whether to let Stein in. 

Sir Irons cleared his throat, making his decision. “We’ll allow it this time, Sir Hellsing. Bring in your ‘expert.’”

Walter disappeared to bring in the group waiting to enter to the conference. As the butterflies in her stomach turned to violent waves of nervousness, Sir Integra could only hope that she wasn’t making a huge mistake bringing him here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Captain Nathans is the main character in my other short story, "A True Soldier of Hellsing." Please give that a read as well to see just how BA a character he is!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the DWMA meets Hellsing, Iscariot, and the Queen.  
> Oh, and Schrodinger.

Chapter Twelve

“Ouch! Who just poked me in the side?” Liz demanded. She squinted around her, but the utter darkness of the room they were cramped in prevented her from seeing a thing. 

“Sorry, Liz, I think that was me,” Maka’s voice apologized nearby. 

“Did it feel like this?” asked Soul on Liz’s other side. A second later Patty started laughing. “Stop it Soul that tickles! Hahahaha!!” 

“Oops. Wrong Thompson sister, my bad.” Even not being able to see him, there was a smile reflected in his tone. He was enjoying the chance at mischief.

The DWMA stood in a small, enclosed space, unable to see or move. They had spent the past few minutes in the small and cramped pitch-black room, having lost Walter on the way through the secret passage way that lead to the underground chamber.

“Maka! Where are you? Are you okay? Daddy’s coming, darling!” Spirit announced. His succumbing to claustrophobia was making him more protective than usual. 

“I’m fine. Leave me alone!” Maka demanded nearby Spirit. He turned and used his hand to feel for his daughter. He felt a girl standing nearby, and grabbed her into a death hug. “Daddy’s here darling! I’ll protect you!” 

“Um…Mr. Death Scythe….can you let me go?” Tsubaki squeaked uncomfortably. Spirit dropped her like she was a hot iron. “Tsubaki! Sorry about that. I thought your boobs were too big to be Maka’s anyway….” 

Suddenly, a small light appeared from the darkness as Stein lit one of his cigarettes. The tiny flicker drew everyone’s eyes to it, then to his face, lit up in an eerie light. “Everyone calm down,” he ordered. “This is standard procedure. Just keep quiet and stop shoving.” There was an annoyed edge to his voice. 

“What’s going on here, Stein?” Spirit asked, annoyed. “What do you mean ‘standard procedure’?”

“They have to make sure we aren’t vampires, or werewolves in disguise,” the doctor explained. He grinned, his glasses reflecting the small amount of light, making them look white. “Or that we’re bringing in unauthorized weapons.” 

That brought a nervous chuckle from the teenagers. “How will we know if we pass their tests?” Tsubaki asked nervously. 

“If we hadn’t passed them, we’d already be dead. We’ve been traveling through various booby traps that would be activated if we weren’t human.” 

“And this cramped room? What sort of test is this?” Liz demanded. 

“More than likely, this is a measure of our night vision capabilities. Vampires can see perfectly in the dark. If we were vampires, we wouldn’t be bumping around and running into each other. They’re probably watching our reactions to this darkness.” 

“How comforting,” Soul murmured. “We’re being spied on.” 

“The Queen of England is part of this council. No chance can be taken lightly,” the Death Scythe said quietly. 

“Exactly. It’s now a waiting game until they decide we’re clean.” With the low light the doctor caught Black Star scowling intently at him. Stein turned away and closed his eyes against the headache that had been gaining strength the past few moments. He turned the screw once, but the motion didn’t alleviate the headache. It wasn’t just a light migraine, or even a stress headache that was bothering him. Even without being able to talk, Black Star is still causing me trouble, Stein realized. 

The boy had been fighting against the Soul Sutures ever since they’d been implanted, and it was giving Stein a headache keeping them in place. If wouldn’t have been as bad if he’d been able to keep a hold on the boy. Stein was powerful, and could keep his Sutures intact for long periods of time, but Black Star was just as determined to break free. It was a battle of willpower, and Stein was at a slight disadvantage because he had to worry about keeping the students alive at the Conference as well. 

“Ah, I almost forgot. Since I have you all together, Meisters, I have one order that must be obeyed to the letter. Do not, I repeat, do not read the soul of the man in the red hat and coat. Do you understand?”

Though addressed to everyone, Stein’s comment seemed to be focused on Maka. She was the most adept at reading the souls of her enemies. 

“Why?” Maka asked. It would be difficult enough to keep her head in the conference, but not read any souls? That was like asking someone to not judge the strength of a handshake, or look over your shoulder in a dark alley. It was instinctual, and it was a lifesaver sometimes. 

“The man in the red coat is Hellsing’s vampire, Alucard. A vampire’s soul is not a kishin egg. It is a black hole of evil and suffering. I’ve seen Meisters go mad gazing at the soul of a vampire only 80 years old. Alucard is centuries old.”

The students became quiet at this blatant danger. “Is he going to eat us?” Patty asked, sounding more curious than worried. 

“Only if Sir Integra lets him,” Stein answered. “Stay on her good side, stay away from Alucard, and we’ll be just fine.” 

At that, a rectangle of light appeared to the side as a hidden door opened, flooding the room with golden light. Everyone shielded their eyes to the intrusion, which was blocked by a familiar silhouette-its monocle gleamed eerily in the light.

“The Council has agreed to speak to you, Stein,” Walter announced. 

It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the light. Once the multicolored spots disappeared, the DWMA group was able to step forward into the enormous meeting room. 

“Wow, this place is HUGE!! Kid, what is this place?” Patty asked enthusiastically, barely able to suppress her excitement. 

“It’s a council room, Patty. A place where important people get together to talk about important things,” he answered, taking the place in as he walked forward. He greatly appreciated the even number of pillars holding up the ceiling surrounding the table. 

“It’s old money, that’s for sure,” Liz mumbled, taking in the ornaments that had been carved in the trim and on the pillars surrounding the enormous table. “This room looks pretty old in general.” 

As they stepped through the threshold, a wave of energy seemed to pass through them. It came in pulses, like a heartbeat, and made the students pause uneasily. They looked around for answers. 

My God, he’s gotten powerful…Stein thought to himself. Integra, what have you created in my absence? Suddenly having the students with him seemed a foolish move, a stupid risk that was only going to end in tragedy down the road. 

“Ignore it,” Stein said, low enough for the group around him too hear, but not the council members. “We have a job, and we won’t be distracted.” 

Kid was staring pointedly across the room, at a tall thin man in a red coat, and his eyes narrowed. The reaper could tell those pulses came from Alucard, his very power pulsing off of him in place of the heart he no longer had. He glanced at Stein warily. 

“Let’s go, they won’t like waiting,” Stein said pointedly, making his way towards the table. 

The long table could have easily sat 50 people, but less than a dozen where there. At the opposite end of the room was a chair, with an older woman in a blue business suit sitting in it and watching them intently. Two guards complete with sunglasses and suits, flanked the prim and proper royal matron. 

Maka’s footsteps suddenly felt heavy, as though she had begun walking through wet sand. Her heart jumped into her throat. Eyes darting all over, she saw the suited men around the table, and another man in the same soldier uniform from earlier. A woman in yellow stood next to them, but other than that she couldn’t notice details.   
Besides the Queen, Maka’s eyes were locked on the tall man in the red coat. Alucard!! She could feel the pulses of energy coming off the old vampire, and became overcome with fear. What if I read Alucard’s soul? What if I go insane? Who’s gonna watch Crona? I can’t go in there!

A strong hand wrapped around Maka’s, jerking her forward a little while pulling her from her fears. Soul’s big red eyes stared into Maka’s intently. “Calm down, Maka,” he barely whispered, keeping her moving with the group. “Just be cool like me. You work with Lord Death every day! A dusty vampire is nothing to be nervous about, got it? What’s he going to do, chase you off his lawn with a cane?”

It was a poor attempt at a joke, but Soul was trying to get Maka back in charge. She looked at her partner, and was able to swallow her fear for the most part. Partially, the idea of being in front of the most powerful woman in England was still a nerve-wracking thought. Being in front of a powerful vampire was downright frightening. Compared to Lord Death’s Reaper Chop, though… “Thanks, Soul, I’m…I’m okay.” 

They walked quickly forward and were able to melt back into the group, led by Stein towards the council table. Spirit walked alongside Stein, matching the long strides with his own. “So, Stein, what’s the plan?”

“Try to explain the situation at hand while making sure Alucard doesn’t eat any of the students.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Spirit muttered quietly. 

~*~

“Sir Integra,” Sir Irons said gravely, “is this your idea of a joke? This is not a daycare! Children have no place in the Round Table Conference!” 

Before Sir Integra could retaliate, Stein was standing before the table. The students stood a ways behind him, looking around the room or at the council members curiously. The teenage Weapons and Meisters were completely forgotten when the tall, lanky scientist stood before them with a huge screw shoved straight through his head. 

“My name’s Doctor Fraken Stein,” he addressed the Council, sounding almost bored while doing so. “They are my students, as well as a valuable asset to the fight that’s about to occur.” 

“Who exactly are you affiliated with? What is your occupation, Dr. Stein?” asked Sir Penwood.

“I’m a teacher and Meister at the Death Weapon Meister Academy. On the side, I’m a researcher, specializing in occult technology.” 

The members of the Council looked at each other. No one was exactly sure what the DWMA was, and no one was unwilling to ask and look ignorant. 

A female voice spoke up instead, and Stein turned towards the Queen as she asked the question on everyone’s mind. “I’ve never been briefed on its existence, Doctor. What is this Academy exactly?”

Spirit actually spoke up, surprising Stein. “Your Majesty, it’s an honor to meet you. I, too, am a member of the DWMA, so allow me to explain.” 

He held up four fingers for everyone to see, counting off his points as he spoke. “There are four types of people in this world that is recognized by the DWMA. Most of the human population is made up of normal, everyday people. A small percentage of people fall into the category of either being a Weapon, or a Meister. Lastly, there are the Monsters. It is the job of the DWMA to train Weapons and Meister to destroy the monsters while protecting the normal people.” 

“What exactly do you mean by ‘Weapons,’ and ‘Meisters,’?” the Queen asked, plainly curious. 

Spirit stood straight and straightened his tie. “Weapons are people who have the ability to physically turn themselves into weapons. They can change into anything, from guns to scythes at a moment’s notice. Weapons are paired with Meisters who can match their souls together and wield them. A Weapon and Meister properly paired can destroy the Devil himself.” 

The other members of the Council looked thoroughly doubtful, to the point that Maxwell scoffed outright at the idea. “What ridiculous lies! Such things do not exist.”

“You, a member of the Catholic Church, are scoffing at the idea of transformation?” Stein chuckled. “I wonder if that would be considered sacrilegious.”

Maxwell stood suddenly in anger, and everyone tensed. It took everything in her for Sir Integra to not cover her face with a hand in embarrassment, and Alucard cracked a small smile. Anyone taking stabs at the Church gained his approval. 

The Queen actually broke the tension. “Those children….they are these ‘weapons’ and ‘meisters’ correct?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Stein nodded. 

“Then, before we continue, I suggest you give the order for them to change into weapons. ” The Queen’s tone did not betray whether she believed Spirit’s claims or not. Her two bodyguards glanced back at her uncertainly, and their hands moved towards the weapons hidden in their coats. 

“Sir?” Maka asked Stein, quietly. The doctor turned back to the students, and nodded. “They won’t believe us otherwise,” he said, loudly enough for the people around the table to hear. 

Tsubaki looked at the Thompson sisters with a slight blush, and they just looked a little worried. Changing into a weapon was usually second nature, but to do it before this group as a demonstration felt weird, almost embarrassing. When the three girls looked at Soul, however, he gave them a thumbs-up and a giant fanged smile. The girls immediately felt better, seeing how calm their scythe friend was behaving. If Soul wasn’t worried, then they had no reason to be either. 

A few flashes of light later, and a few gasps rang out around the table as a Maka held a scythe, Kid held two pistols, and Black Star silently held a giant ninja-throwing star a meter across. Maka gripped Soul harder than necessary, making the scythe hiss in pain. Maka! What are you freaking out over?

Maka refused to look at the other end of the room, where the Queen was seated. But the royal matron did not have Maka almost shaking in her boots. The pulsing waves of soul energy she could feel were coming from the vampire in red, Alucard. Can’t you feel it, Soul? I can feel the vampire’s energy….I’m terrified that I’ll look at his soul and go insane!! 

Pull yourself together Maka! You’re acting like Crona, for god’s sake! I will go limp and knock you over in front of all these guys and the QUEEN if you don’t knock this off! 

I can’t just stop being scared, Soul!

Just pretend you aren’t scared, and you’ll start believing it! Be scared later, not now!

Alucard watched the students with an intrigued look gracing his pale features. He had heard of weapons and meisters, but it was rare to see them in person! I wonder if I have the capabilities to be a Meister….the vampire king wondered to himself, intrigued at the possibility of what weapon he would wield, what powers he would have. 

His attention was brought to the girl with the pigtails, and a predatory grin spread across his face.   
She was trying very hard to not look his way, too hard in fact. He could smell her terror from across the room, and it was a wonderful scent, one that made him want to bear his fangs and scare the hell out of her. Integra probably would not appreciate that. 

Within a few seconds, the girl stopped shaking, and he could hear her heart stop hammering away so ferociously. She took a few deep breathes, and seemed to be pulling herself together. However, he could see that the sudden courage was just an act, a thin veil to protect herself against him. Yes, definitely going to give her the scare of her life later. 

Black Star looked around at the other DWMA members, and glared at Stein, whose headache suddenly pulsed to an almost unbearable stab, similar to when the screw first had been implanted. The professor concentrated, and Black Star shuddered as pressure suddenly increased around his neck. The stabbing sensation lessened as Black Star stopped fighting. Stein couldn’t keep the sutures in place for much longer. Just last out the meeting, he told himself. 

Everyone around the table had a shocked and/or intrigued look on their face after witnessing the transformation take place. Even Sir Integra, who had only the vaguest notion about who Stein had been working with, was also in awe. It was one thing to see vampires and ghouls, but they did not deal with black magics very often, and she had never heard of people with the ability to transform into weapons! She looked at her butler (who had an eyebrow raised in surprise), curious about his initial thoughts on seeing teenagers turn into deadly weapons right in front of them, and decided to ask later. 

Stein looked over to see Spirit had not changed form, and decided this was a good plan. Keep the number of weapons and meisters known to a minimum. Good idea. It could save someone’s life later. 

“What trickery is this? Do you expect us to fall for such a cheap illusion?” Sir Penwood accused. 

“Would you like them to demonstrate their combat capabilities? I assure you, the blades are quite sharp and the bullets will go through anything.” Stein replied. Maxwell was scribbling something madly on the back of a piece of paper…was he making a memo to himself? Note to self: look into black magic to make humans into holy weapons of God after lunch with Pope tomorrow. 

The guards around the Queen began to draw their guns at the perceived threat, but the Queen made a motion for them to halt. “No need, Dr. Stein. Your students may change back, if they so desire.” Even if Penwood did not believe the doctor, it seemed he had earned the Queen’s approval. 

Tsubaki, Liz, Patty, and Soul returned to their human forms, Soul messaging his arm from Maka’s painful grip. “Sorry,” she whispered. 

“Just before you arrived, doctor, the vampire was going to give his report about his recent investigation in South America. We will listen to this report, and then I want your take on these recent happenings, understand?”

“Yes, of course,” Stein answered. 

The Queen turned back to Alucard, who had been behaving himself very well throughout the meeting so far. “Now, vampire, tell us what happened in South America.”

He bowed his head politely. “My Master had me go to South America to flush out the possible perpetrators of the increased FREAK vampire activity that has been happening as of late. It seems the group, known as Millennium, knew of my arrival, and attempted to destroy me.” Alucard chuckled at the bungled assassination attempt by a whole S.W.A.T. team. “Needless to say, it didn’t work out in their favor.”

“What about the man you dueled with? The one in the suit?” Sir Irons asked. 

“Another vampire. He was a card shark, actually able to use playing cards as bombs and distractions. He was created by Millennium.”

Stein looked at Alucard, a curious look on his face. “This card shark, did he have a Cajun accent? What was his name?”

“Tubalcain Alhambra. He seemed to be from the area,” the vampire said. 

Stein sighed quietly in relief. Interesting. Well, at least I don’t have to ask Xavier what Remy’s been up to recently. 

“You said this vampire was created by this Millennium? How do you mean?” Sir Irons asked. 

Stein cleared his throat, and pulled out a copy of the FREAK chip that Integra had sent him originally to show the table. “By using this,” he said. “You see, I was contacted by Sir Integra to study this recently discovered device, a ‘FREAK chip’, and see how it connected to the recent increase of activity by vampires in the both country and the world.”

“What were your findings?” Sir Integra asked. 

“This chip,” which he passed around the table, “Is what’s behind the vampire attacks. Specifically, this is the future of vampirism, a computer chip that spreads the vampire virus without a bite, simply by implantation.” 

Sir Penwood, who was holding the chip, fumbled it fearfully before passing it to the next person.

“I will get straight to the point. This chip is a marvel of engineering, and is behind the three major problems that have suddenly occurred. First of all, it is a chip that, once implanted in a host, creates a powerful vampire, no matter if the host is a virgin or not. This chip allows the implanter to decide who is going to become a vampire. Sex and virginal status are no longer a limiting factor.”

“How does the chip do this?” Sir Integra asked.

“These chips act as carriers for an improved strain of the vampirism disease, packing a more potent concentration and making it a more aggressive virus in every way. When a specific person is chosen and implanted, the virus is released into the host body and changes it into a vampire.”

“What about the ghouls? How are ghouls still being created, and how are they able to create other ghouls?” Irons asked. 

“This virus is attuned to attack tissue that is not of the host’s body. So, as is per the usual order, once a person is bitten by a FREAK vampire, they become a ghoul, but again sex or virginal status do not play a role in what transformation the person undergoes. They become a ghoul, albeit a smarter version that can follow complex orders away from their vampire masters. Also, because of the virus’ potency, the ghouls can now spread the virus through their own bites, the self-perpetuating zombie army that figures in many horror movies of the day.” 

“What about the third problem? You said this chip is behind three problems we are facing via the Millennium threat. What is it?” asked the Queen. 

“Although this idea was not evident in the research I performed, something Alucard mentioned makes me believe this. Alucard,” Stein said, turning to the vampire and speaking to him directly for the first time in almost a decade. “Have you ever faced a vampire that used cards in such a manner?”

The vampire took a moment to answer. Whether it was because he was trying to be defiant to the scientist that effectively shackled him, or because he was trying to remember through the centuries of battle of vampires ever using such powers was unknown. Eventually, though, he did speak. “Not cards in particular, no, but very rarely I have come face-to-face with a vampire that displayed an unusual ability. The Valentine Brothers that attacked Hellsing displayed abilities I’ve never seen. One even went so far as to claim he had been created to ‘be my death.’” 

“I should say that one in particular was a defective model,” Maxwell muttered under his breath. 

“What does this have to do with the chip’s capabilities?” Sir Integra asked quickly, as though trying to steer the question away from the attack on her beloved organization. 

Stein thought for a moment. “I think these chips are being used to create not just vampires, but special vampires, with special skills never before seen. Throughout the world there are humans that have amazing abilities—like the card throwing vampire Alucard mentioned. Millennium would just have to find these individuals, implant the chip, and have vampires with fantastic capabilities at their disposal.” 

“This begs the question, though. Who is Millennium?” Sir Irons asked. 

“That I have the answer to,” Alucard said, bringing himself to attention. “Fifty-five years ago a Nazi major attempted to create a vampire army. Walter and I laid waste to the operation. However, they refused to give up. Now they are trying to complete their research. They’re the remnants of the Third Reich’s “Last Battalion.” That’s what Millennium is.”

“Ah, vell, I see the Tubalcain gave up the game a few minutes early. Too bad, this could ‘ave been a complete surprise!” said a German accented voice. It echoed around the room but no one had spoken. Suddenly, a boy appeared at the secret tunnel entrance, with an officer’s uniform and large cat ears. 

He chuckled at everyone’s surprised gasps. “I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something?”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah, I'm so sorry! To those of you waiting for this fic, I'm sooooo sorry for the crazy long delays with this! Supernatural epic fics sorta ate my life this year, and I apologize this fic keeps falling to the wayside. I promise, it'll get finished! (Now I have an excuse to watch the Hellsing OVA Episodes 5-8 DVD my boyfriend gave me as a present!)
> 
> I hope this chapter is worth it!

Everyone was caught off guard by the sudden appearance of the strange cat-boy. One of Maxwell’s bodyguards, a woman named Heinkel, was the first to draw her pistol, followed by Captain Bernadette. The boy chuckled, but held up his hands to show he wasn’t armed. “There’s no point in shooting me, I’m just zhe messenger,” he said calmly, walking towards the table. 

“Walter,” Sir Integra said, glancing at the butler. 

He looked just as perplexed as everyone else. “Security is airtight, mum. Nothing’s been breached.” 

“Security doesn’t vork on me. I am both everyvhere and novhere,” the cat-boy said smugly. He suddenly paused, and looked at Stein and Spirit, then the DWMA students with a confused look on his face. “Who are you?” he asked, plainly curious. 

“Depends on who is asking,” Spirit said defensively, taking an unconscious step to shield Maka. 

“Warrant Officer Schrodinger,” the cat-boy said haughtily, but he shrugged his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter, whoever you are. I have a message to deliver.” 

He turned back to the table, and pulled an old looking monitor from nowhere and placed it on the table. “To the representatives of Britain and the Vatican who are here today, my commanding officer, the Major, has something he wants to tell you.” 

Pulling out a remote control, Schrodinger attempted to turn the monitor on, but it was giving him some trouble. A voice came from the box, but no picture appeared. 

_“Schrodinger? I cannot see anything on zhe screen?”_

“Major, there are new faces at zhe meeting,” Schrodinger said. A fuzzy picture of a leering face appeared, and the Nazi Major smiled at everyone. 

_“Vhere?”_ he asked. He looked around from the screen, and stopped at Stein’s imposing figure. _“Vell, vell, vell, I vas not expecting you to bring in outside help, fraulein. You zhere! Vhat’s your name?”_

Stein cocked his head a little, and turned the screw in his head a few times. The clicking sound made everyone shudder, even Schrodinger. “Dr. Stein. I’m just a consultant. Please, don’t mind us,” he said, waving him on to whatever the Major was planning to do. 

The Major glared at the doctor, but decided his attention was needed elsewhere. As he turned back to the table at large, the screaming could finally be heard coming from the background of the Major’s transmission. 

“Sounds like you’re having some trouble Major,” Schrodinger asked with a smile, as the screen changed and instead showed a multitude of mutilated bodies and parts, the remnant of some unspeakable slaughter. 

_“Trouble? Not at all. In fact, a veight has been lifted from my shoulders, and about damn time, too_ ,” the Major said. 

“You there, Nazi,” Integra said, her calm tone but the steel undertone was clearly heard by everyone. “Who are you? What is the purpose of this idiocy you are undertaking?”

The Major smiled a smile that was no less terrifying despite his fatness and beady, golden eyes hidden behind glasses. He actually chuckled at her questions. _“Purpose? Vhat a silly question my beautiful fraulein. You see, ve **have** no purpose.”_

The screen changed to another scene, of a man in an officer’s uniform with a rag over his mouth, a sign in German hanging around his neck. He was surrounded by dead bodies, and his eyes were impossibly wide as a huge crowd of hungry vampires eyed him hungrily. 

_“You should know, fraulein, that there are those in this world, certain irredeemable louts, for whom the means need no end. That is to say, ourselves,”_ the Major finished, and on cue the vampires descended, tearing the man apart on the screen. 

Maka turned from the screen, covering her mouth with her hands to prevent her from vomiting, although the sounds coming from the television would forever haunt the nightmares of everyone in the room. She didn’t even mind Spirit pulling her into his chest protectively and trying to cover her ears. 

Tsubaki covered her ears, and Liz shielded Patty from the screen, too shocked to make a sound. 

Stein did not react at all, it seemed. He was watching Schrodinger, who wrinkled his face as though in surprise, and looked around curiously. He turned back to the table to enjoy the looks of shock and horror on the faces of most of the conference goers. 

“You’re insane!” Maxwell accused.

The Major, who reappeared in front of the camera, simply laughed. _“You’re God guarantees my insanity, does he not? I think a better question to ask yourself, is vhether your God is the sane vone, ja?”_

The Major chuckled again, and the camera panned out to show the short, dumpy man in a white suit and trench coat was standing before an old Nazi flag. _“Vell, then, just try to defeat me, you ‘normal’ people; I vill destroy any who stand between me and my enemy.”_

“Who is that?” Maxwell asked. 

The Major pointed a gloved finger straight at the screen, and straight at the glowering Sir Integra. _“Britain! Although, if ve are going to be specific here, my enemy is the man who is laughing uncontrollably in zhe corner.”_

All eyes turned to Alucard, who was doubled over in laughter, shaking violently until the hysterical cries of humor seemed to erupt out of his body. “Is that what this is? A rematch 50 years in the making? If it’s a fight you want, I’ll gladly give it to you.” 

_“See you on zhe battlefield,”_ he said with a sly smile. 

Stein suddenly doubled over and made a noise of pain, grabbing his head in his hand, and Black Star suddenly started coughing uncontrollably. “You’re….a real…jerk…Stein!” the ninja sputtered between coughing fits. 

Tsubaki patted the boy’s back as he continued to cough, catching his breath and getting the feeling back in his vocal cords. “How are you doing, Black Star?” she asked. 

_“Schrodinger, vhat’s going on?”_ the Major asked, seeing that he had lost the attention of some of the table members but unable to see off screen.

The cat boy shrugged, but before he could answer Black Star pointed at the monitor. “You, cat, and you, old fat guy,” he said, looking angry. “You really wanna start a war with an old-ass vampire? That’s _pathetic!_ If you want a real war worth fighting, I’ll take you all on! I’m not afraid of you, or your stupid vampires, or anything! One day, I’m going to defeat _God_. You’ll be a perfect stepping stone.”

“Black Star, I’m not sure threatening him is a good idea,” Tsubaki said quietly, still trying to forget the nightmarish images they had just watched. 

Schrodinger laughed. “You hear that, Major?”

The Major was not as amused as his younger subordinate. _“I did. And vhy should he not have a say? After all, in this var to end all vars, they might still try to fight us long after all of you are dead and buried, those who **failed** to stop us.”_

“Alucard, Seras. Shoot him.” Integra ordered, doing everything she could to not scream it at the fucking man taunting her on the screen. Alucard’s hysterical laughter broke her concentration, Black Star’s sudden speech making him laugh uncontrollably. 

The monitor exploded into shards of glass and metal, the smoke from Seras’ BAERKLAS rifle still visible. Schrodinger backed away, but half of his head disappeared, the body collapsing into a heap on the floor. Everyone turned to see it was Kid, holding Patty in pistol form, having pulled the trigger. “They were really starting to irritate me,” he said. Alucard, still chuckling to himself, gave Kid a knowing grin. 

Seras gasped at the fact that, despite just being killed, the boy’s body had completely disappeared. 

There was a clearing of the throat, and everyone turned to look at the Queen. “Sir Integra, Alucard. Destroy them. That’s an order.” 

She turned to the DWMA, and nodded once. “Dr. Stein. I understand if you wish to return home, and if that is the case I suggest you leave quickly. However, if you can spare any assistance, we just might need it.” 

Stein nodded. “I have to talk to my colleague, your Majesty,” he said after a moment. 

“Do it quickly. This conference is adjourned.” The Queen left the room, her bodyguards following behind her quickly and silently. 

“Maka!” Stein turned around, just in time to see Spirit, who had been holding Maka the entire time, suddenly realize she was not longer conscious. “Maka? Maka?!” he asked, bewildered as to how she could have passed out standing up and without him noticing. Her eyes were wide open and glazed over, like she had seen something no one was meant to see….

Soul looked at Walter and Integra. “Is there a hospital or medical wing?” he asked, trying to keep his tone calm. 

The members of the conference were too busy discussing the Major’s war declaration to notice the sudden departure of the entire DWMA as they followed Walter out of the conference room. Seras and Pip followed the teenagers, as Stein was pulled aside from the group by Integra as he passed by her chair. She grabbed his arm, stopping him, looking furious as all hell. “We need to talk,” the look she gave him conveyed even though she hadn’t said a word. 

He looked at her hand, then at her. “Once I make sure my student is alright,” he said, gently removing her hand and turning back to follow the group. She sighed in an irritated way, but didn’t rise. She had to stay to make sure the other members of the conference got into high gear. There was going to be a war coming, and they needed to plan for it. 

Integra motioned her head towards the group, and Alucard nodded. He walked into a wall and disappeared, following and keeping a close eye on their new comrades. 

~*~

There was no real medical wing in the estate, but there was a huge bedroom, large enough for everyone from both Hellsing and the DWMA to fit comfortably. Most people sat on the floor. Maka was on the large bed, a wet washcloth on her forehead, Soul and Spirit sitting on opposite sides of her still form. 

Walter entered the room holding a platter with a washcloth, a bowl of warm water, and a pill bottle. Stein was sitting in the only chair in the room, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, holding his head in one hand. Walter tossed the bottle to Stein, who caught it with his other hand. “Aspirin,” the butler explained. 

“Thanks,” the doctor said, popping several pills in his mouth. “Trying to keep that idiot from making a spectacle was a trial in of itself.” The doctor glared at Black Star. “You couldn’t stay quiet for five minutes longer?”

“I couldn’t stand being mute a _second_ longer! Those Nazi guys were going to come all the way over here and miss out on the opportunity to fight me, the famous Black Star! I had to let them know!” the boy countered, sounding proud of himself. 

Walter handed the wash cloth to Spirit, who doused it in the warm water and dabbed it on Maka’s head, hoping the sensation would wake her up. “I’m fairly certain he did not exacerbate the situation any further,” Walter said. “The declaration was made.” 

“A declaration of war by Nazis…” Pip muttered to himself. “Of all the things I figured I’d do in my life, fighting Nazi vampires was never one on my list.” 

“I’m pretty sure that wasn’t on anyone’s bucket list,” Soul said while rolling his eyes. 

Seras appeared behind Walter and stepped forward, leaning towards the bed to get a better look at Maka’s unconscious form. “Is she going to be alright?” Seras asked cautiously. Standing back up, she saw Spirit staring at her, drool dripping from the corners of his mouth, his eyes slightly glazed over. “Um, are you going to be alright?”

“Oh, yes! Maka’s perfectly fine, she’s a tough little cookie! I’m perfectly great, by the way! My name is Spirit, I’m a Death Scythe, I like long walks on the beach, what’s your name, angel?” Spirit spoke so quietly and smoothly that actually had taken Seras a second to understand everything he said.

“Um…Seras Victoria,” the young draculina said, blushing slightly as Scythe took her hand and kissed it. 

“Very lovely to meet you, Miss Victoria,” Spirit said with a wink. 

“Alright, alright, enough of the gushy crap,” Pip muttered, making a point to not look at the two. 

“Yeah, seriously,” Soul agreed. “Maka would smack the crap out of you if she saw how much of a fool you were acting.” 

“I think this was already asked, but what did happen to her?” Seras asked. “I mean, she just…fainted, standing up?”

“I think it would be safe to assume that she saw something in that meeting she wasn’t supposed to see,” Kid said, speaking for the first time. 

“Maybe seeing that bloodshed on the screen made her faint with freight? I can totally relate, I wanted to throw up,” Liz commented, still feeling a little queasy.  
“No fair, I wanted to see the blood too!” Patty pouted. “Big sisters gotta go and mess everything up!” 

“Believe me, Patty, you are much better off not seeing what we saw. However, that was not what I was referencing.” Kid’s hand was on his chin, thinking to himself. He saw the look of concern on Stein’s face, and was grateful to see the scientist had the same thought as himself. 

“Guys! What are you being all mopey for? This is gonna be epic!” Black Star said loudly, pausing to laugh dramatically. “Hahahaha! Just wait until they see me and Tsubaki coming at them, they’ll go running the other way!” 

“He certainly seems…boisterous,” Walter said with a smirk aimed at the scientist behind him. Stein’s mind and spirit was still a bit sore from trying to keep the idiot from speaking. 

“He hasn’t even gotten started yet,” Stein muttered. 

~*~

The Major was conflicted. Part of him was ecstatically happy. The declaration of war was delivered, and after more than 50 years of plans and hiding, the war with Britain, and Alucard in particular, was about to begin. His ecstasy was dampened, however, by the unknown elements that had been at the Round Table Conference. A tall man in a lab coat with a screw in his head, plus several teenagers? He didn’t like the fact that he did not know who they were or why they had been at the conference. The Major was a man who did not like surprises, especially if they interfered with his well-laid plans. 

“Doc, did you happen to know that man with screw in his head?” the Major asked the Doctor as they walked the hallway back to central command. 

Herr Doctor, in his blood-stained apron, nodded once. “Actually, I think I do. I believe his name is Dr. Franken Stein, Major. A well-known name in zhe occult sciences. Although I don’t know his vork personally, I have heard rumors and they are…very interesting.” The Doctor bit his lip in excitement. 

“You must share these stories with me at some point, Herr Doctor. For now, though, we must be away.” 

The Major, the Doctor, and the ever silent Captain entered the zeppelin’s command center, and discovered someone sitting next the Major’s chair, which was turned away from them. “In the time it took you to valk down that hallway I got all zhe vay to England, got shot, and still made it back before you. You might want to consider a diet, Herr Major,” the catboy purred, perfectly unharmed as he lounged on the floor next to the turned chair. 

The Doctor grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and lifted him off the floor. “Show respect to your commanding officer, Warrant Schrodinger!” 

Instead of being angry, though, the Major in question just chuckled. “You know I can’t do that, Schrodinger. Doctor, just let him down. A little joke is not enough to spoil my good mood.” 

The Doctor put the boy down reluctantly. Schrodinger’s ears twitched in excitement. “Actually, Major, I have a surprise for you! If you were in a good mood now, vait ‘til you see what I found on zhe way back!” 

“And vhat vould that be?” the Major asked, humoring the young officer. 

The voice that responded from the other side of the chair was unexpected. “Guten abend, Herr Major,” a female voice grated lightly. The chair turned around, and the Major came face-to-face with a woman in black camo-pattered pants and a black tank top. Her skin was deathly white, almost tinted blue, and her black straw-like hair hung down in matted locks. 

Her bangs covered one eye, and the one that was looking at his was a pale blue that he recognized from decades past. It was the same eye color people had as they were crushed by the tanks that drove over them. It was the same skin color of a body falling under a hail of bullets. 

She was the very color of death itself.

The woman’s body was covered in long, black stitches that raced up and down her arms, hands, face, across her neck and chest. She was certainly a strange sight, and that was saying something considering the man had an army of vampires under his command. 

“Who are you?” the Doctor demanded. “Who do you think you are--”

“I think,” the woman said, cutting off the doctor’s righteous tirade. She looked at the Major, staring at him as she spoke, “That a _Colonel_ should be shown more respect, don’t you, Major?” she asked. She motioned around to the zeppelin’s command room. “After all, I helped you get here, didn’t I?” 

Cy stood from the chair and walked around it, ruffling the top of Schrodinger’s head right between his ears, causing him to purr, before stepping down. She walked a circle around the bridge, hands clasped behind her back, which was ramrod straight. She looked over everything with a practiced eye and a stern expression on her face, as if she had walked that bridge before, as if she knew it better than herself. The few command center staff that spared her a glance quickly ducked their heads, instinctively afraid to catch her glower. 

After taking his seat in the commander’s chair, both the Doctor and the Captain on either side of him, the Major let out a dark chuckle of recognition, but the Doctor didn’t seem so convinced. He gave her another once over, and something about her words or demeanor finally connected the dots in his mind. He shook his head in disbelief. “No, no, you can’t be Colonel Brunner, she—“

“Died?” Cy offered helpfully. “I can understand the lack of initial recognition. After all, the last time you saw me, I vas nothing more than a pile of ash on your operating table.” She spoke with clipped, quick efficiency and the Doctor shrank at her stare.

“I’m so sorry, Colonel,” the Doctor said, sincerely sorry. “Ve’ve, uh, managed to perfect the chips.”

“So I’ve noticed,” she said dismissively, looking around at the shadowy members of Millennium as they busied themselves. “An army of a thousand vampires,” she said in slight awe. “Vell done, Major.” 

“Your sacrifice vas not in vain,” the Major finally said. “But I’m curious how you are here, now, in this strange new body?”

“I vas hoping you could tell me,” she said. “One minute, the most intense pain I’ve ever felt is melting my body into literal dust. The next, I’m in a strange room with a man over top of me, grinning. He had a large screw in zhe side of his head,” she said, pointing to her head. 

The Doctor and the Major shared a look. Cy caught the look between them. “Do you know him?”

“Only in name,” the Doctor said. 

“He vas present at zhe Round Table Conference vhen I gave Hellsing my declaration,” the Major said. “He…resurrected you?”

“I believe he simply took the chip that was pre-programmed vith the copy of my mind and implanted it in this…ensemble,” she finished, looking down at herself. 

“Vell, Lady Luck must smile just so upon us, returning you to us, Colonel,” the Major said with a growing smile. “Vith you at our side, the army will not let a single soul left standing in all of England.” 

“Oh, Major. I don’t plan on sitting out of vhis fight any longer,” she said with a dangerous gleam in her dead eyes and a smile on her blue-tinted lips. “I vill lead the charge myself. Vhen you see vhat I can do now…oh, Major, zhe fires of Britain won’t even be out vhen we start ravaging the Earth,” she stated. “I don’t know how zhat man Stein got my chip—I don’t even care zhat he did! He’s created the ultimate weapon in me, and I vill allow only you, my Major, to direct its punishing blow.”

The Major interlaced his long fingers together in his lap. “Zhe Colonel I knew was not one to take flights of fancy.”

Cy laughed, the grating sound making Schrodinger wince as his sensitive ears were overwhelmed by the noise. “Zhe Colonel you knew is _dead_ ,” she said simply. “I am better zhan I ever vas before, Major! Have you ever heard of black blood Major, Doctor?”

The two men looked at each other and shook their heads in tandem. 

“It vill be a turning point in zhis war to end all wars,” she said. “Vould you like a demonstration?”

“Oh, very much so,” the Major said with excitement in his voice. The Doctor and Captain looked on in silent observation, though inside the doctor was trembling with anticipation. He had only heard of Stein’s experiments through rumors and whispers—to see it in the flesh would be amazing!

“Krieg, come on and say ‘guten tag’ to your commanding officer,” Cy, Colonel Brunner, said with a grin. Immediately she spasmed as a black liquid burst forth from her back and formed into a human head and torso. It was black like a shadow, with shoulder-length white hair, a thin mustache and goatee both white, and a single gleaming white eye, the other hidden by its hair. It looked like an inverted image of the woman it sprang from, and it tilted its head curiously at the three men before it. 

“I don’t bow to anyone but you, Master!” the black blood weapon announced rebelliously. She simply chuckled and patted the top of its head. It took a moment to concentrate, but the day long airplane ride had been more than enough time for her to figure out a few tricks. 

“Shower of Needles,” she said loud enough for her audience to hear, and immediately the black person began shooting meter-long, thin, black needles everywhere. She managed not to hit anyone, but got close enough to make some jump and startle as the needles punctured the floor of the zeppelin. She was careful not to hit the walls of the flying airship itself. 

The needles melted where they stood and rejoined with Krieg’s body, and she grinned in triumph. “Krieg, weapon form, ja?” 

That was new, and though the cargo area in the plane had been too small to practice, Krieg transformed without a hitch, showing off his new form to his captivated audience. 

The Major clapped slowly, grinning all the while, and the Doctor did as well; the Colonel noticed the blood on his glove where he had bit through the material in his excitement. 

Krieg disappeared suddenly, and she had to double over slightly to keep herself upright momentarily. The show had taken more out of her than she meant for it to. 

“Colonel, are you well?” the Doctor asked, bounding forward, fingers itching to take her to his lab and see what made her tick. Stein was a genius, an artist! 

“Fine, fine,” she said, waving him away, cursing her momentary weakness. In front of the Major, no less!

The Major looked her over once again, still smiling. “Ach! Vhere are my manners. Colonel, vhen vas zhe last time you ate?” he asked politely. 

Colonel Brunner took a moment to think. “I…haven’t,” she realized, looking at the Doctor. The man was almost salivating over secrets her new body had tucked away. “Not since I woke up.”

“Even with zhe chip in place, dampening your appetites, you must eat to keep up your strengths!” The Doctor chastised her, albeit gently. 

“Zhe virus?” she asked. 

“Ve placed a perfected one on zhe chip after your…unfortunate failure,” Herr Doctor said. “Ve fully planned on trying again but…”

“Alucard destroyed zhe facility,” the Major offered. 

“Vell, perhaps Fate smiled upon us zhat day,” the Colonel said. A young officer suddenly appeared at the Doctor’s arm, a bag of blood on a silver tray he held. He didn’t look at Cy in the eye; despite her strange appearance, he recognized a superior officer when he saw one. She breathed in deeply, and realized she could smell the vampiric virus inside him, almost sickly sweet to the point it stung her sensitive nose. 

The Doctor handed her the bag and she took it after a moment, slight hesitation in her hands as she did so. Her first taste of blood as a successful vampire...after over 50 years of waiting and dying once for it, it was a heady moment. 

The Captain poured a glass of wine for the Major, and he raised it to her. “To old friends und new battles,” he said as he lifted it. 

She raised the bag and took a tentative sip, but ended up spitting it out, face scrunched up in absolute disgust. The Doctor looked vaguely horrified. “Colonel?”

“Vhat is this? Poison? It’s _disgusting_!” she said, throwing the bag at the Doctor, who caught it before it splattered the rest of its contents everywhere in the pristine room. 

“It’s zhe purest blood we could synthesize,” the Doctor said. “Some people have a difficult time adjusting to zhe—“

“I’m not ‘some people!’” She said angrily. “Zhis is garbage!” 

“You must eat _something_ , Colonel,” the Doctor said gently, as if explaining the idea to a child. “Maybe you’d prefer some A/B positive?” 

Colonel Brunner pinched the bridge of her nose in irritation. “Fine, fine, do what you must!” 

The Doctor whispered another order into the young officer’s ear, and as the young vampire started off to fetch another bag of blood for the Colonel, she smelled that sweet scent once again. She didn’t even realize her fangs were out, or even what her intentions were, until she cut off the officer’s retreat by appearing before him almost instantly. She stopped him with a sinister smile that was all sharks’ teeth and jagged fangs. 

“Why do you smell _so good_?” was all the composed and polished Colonel managed to ask before she pounced on him, ripping his throat open and gulping down the vampire’s blood greedily. 

The Doctor backed away from the carnage up to where the Major sat. He took in the scene of violence as it happened only steps away from him either well; he still sipped his wine with ease. 

“Interesting,” the Major commented. There was only one vampire known to feast on the blood of his own kind. Only one. 

The King himself. 

“Very interesting,” the Doctor replied, nibbling on his index finger, watching with fascination as the body spasmed, but not a drop of blood hit the floor of the airship. Even in the middle of a feeding frenzy, the Colonel was as facetious as ever. 

The Colonel got her feet a moment later, and turned to her commanding officer, and wiped away a few drops of blood that managed to escape the corner of her lips. She licked her fingers and grinned savagely. “You’re right as always, Doc,” she said with a dangerous smile. “I feel _much_ better now.”


	14. Chapter 14

“Dammit,” Stein muttered under his breath. He pulled his hand away from Maka’s forehead. Her eyes were still open and staring, but it was clear she wasn’t there. In fact, he tried to find her wavelength and couldn’t find it anywhere. She was still alive, but just barely. And her soul?...

“I warned you,” he said to her. “I warned all of you, didn’t I? Why didn’t you listen, Maka!” 

“What are you going on about? You’re acting like she’s dead,” Seras said, looking at the teenage girl. She could hear the girl’s heart still beating with her vampiric hearing. 

Stein ignored the Hellsing operative and instead turned to Soul. The boy was still sitting on the side of the bed, holding her limp hand. His cool and collected façade was starting to weaken the longer Maka lay there. “Can you reach her at all?” he asked the weapon.

Soul shook his head. “I’ve been trying. It’s like she’s trapped in a fog, or stuck in the middle of the ocean. She’s out there and I can’t…” he growled in frustration. 

“What happened, Doc?” Liz asked. 

Stein sighed. “She suffered a shock. Like an electrical shock can knock a heart out of its cardiac rhythm, she witnessed something that dislocated her soul from her body.” 

Spirit’s eyes opened wide. “Wait, Stein, don’t tell me she—“

“Caught a glimpse of my inner self?” a baritone chuckled from everywhere and nowhere around them. 

“Vampire! Fix my daughter right now!” Spirit demanded. 

Another chuckle. “Only Sir Integra gives me orders worth following, Death Scythe.” 

Instantly appearing like a red-robed ghost, the vampire was suddenly standing in the middle of the room. Tsubaki ducked behind Black Star, eyes wide and scared. Liz jumped behind her younger sister with a shriek. Patty simply laughed and clapped her hands. “Scare Liz again!” she told the old vampire. 

He didn’t pay them any mind. Black Star simply looked the vampire over and huffed. “You’re what the fuss is all about? I could finish you off in my sleep,” the boy said haughtily. 

Alucard scoffed. “You’re indifference will be your undoing. I’m sure your end will be entertaining, to say the least.” 

Alucard’s red eyes drifted across the young fearful faces and landed on Kid’s. As yellow eyes bored into red ones, the vampire tilted his head slightly. “You’ve grown quite a bit since last we met.”

Kid narrowed his eyes. “You know me?”

“Of course. You’re Lord Death’s son.”

“How do you know my father?” Kid asked. 

A smirk graced the old vampire’s face. “I know Death in passing, but he’s never come for me.” Those red eyes looked the boy over, a melancholy in those undead eyes that Kid was not expecting. “Perhaps _you’ll_ be the one to come and collect when the time is right.”

Kid held the gaze of the vampire for a long moment before Soul interrupted. 

“Hey, vampire! Fix Maka already or I’ll double kill you dead!” Soul threatened, teeth gnashing angrily. 

“How terrifying,” the undead creature said with boredom. 

Stein glanced over at Walter, who was standing impassively at the doorway. It would be useless to ask him for help—both he and Walter knew Alucard was a free agent and essentially acted on his own accord. 

“You’ve gotten much stronger since we last met,” Stein said casually. 

“Sir Integra keeps me well fed,” the vampire answered with a flash of fangs. The indifferent doctor and the impassive vampire stared each other down for several seconds. 

Seras, standing next to the butler, leaned over to him. “Why are they having a staring contest?” she whispered. 

“Stein used to work for us, and he created the system that keeps Alucard’s power in check. I do believe Alucard’s still a bit upset about it,” Walter answered. 

“He worked for Sir Integra!”

“We had to let him go for inappropriate employee behavior,” Walter answered tersely. 

“The other members of the Council are gathering their resources together for the impending attack,” Integra said as she strode into the room with purpose. She glanced at the teenagers milling around and almost all of them stood to attention. All except Soul, who refused to leave Maka’s side. 

“You there! If I had my gun on me, I’d make short work of you right here and now!” She snapped at the blue-haired ninja boy. Black Star looked less than impressed at the threat. 

“You don’t scare me,” Black Star huffed. “One day I’m gonna defeat God.” 

Integra looked ready to strangle him herself. It didn’t help that a deep chuckle emanated from the vampire in the room. “You plan on defeating God?”

“Are all vampires as stupid and deaf as you are?” Black Star shot back. 

Alucard lost his grin. “The only thing you’ll gain from antagonizing me is a slow death, boy.”

“I’m not afraid of you!” 

“Black Star, be quiet. You don’t want to anger Mr. Alucard!” Tsubaki said, trying desperately to reel in her meister before she became Meister-less.

“Enough!” Sir Integra snapped and everyone fell silent. Even Black Star was quiet. The Hellsing leader walked to the bed and the crowd parted for her until she got to the bedside. 

“What’s wrong with the girl?” Integra asked briskly. 

Stein motioned towards Alucard. “You’re vampire sent her into shock.” 

“Alucard didn’t go anywhere near your student,” Integra pointed out. “Are you sure she didn’t faint from the Major’s horror show?”

Stein put one of his cigarettes in his mouth and slid his hands into his pockets. “It wasn’t the Nazi snuff film that did this. Something powerful shocked her so badly it forcefully separated her soul from her body. Only something just as powerful can reestablish the connection. Meisters can see souls, Integra. I believe Maka saw something that she wasn’t supposed to have seen. See the damage a mere glimpse has created.”

Integra’s eyes hardened. “You’ll address me as Sir Integra, Stein. Understand?”

His eyes flickered to hers for just a second. “Perfectly, sir.” He sounded downright bored with the conversation.

She pushed the glasses up her nose and sighed. “At the moment, we need all hands on deck. Alucard, revive the girl.”

“Of course, Master.” 

Stein looked over at the butler. “Walter, tell our pilot that he, his crew, and Crona are needed.”

Walter stood up a little straighter and his face became grim. “I wouldn’t suggest involving more strangers than necessary. We’ve already had one security breach too many today.” 

“You said you needed all hands, didn’t you?” Spirit asked.

“Why did you leave a student behind?” Seras asked. 

“He’s really shy,” Soul said. 

“And terrified of…well…everything,” Tsubaki admitted. 

“A child that hunts monsters whose afraid of everything? I’d say he’s the smartest one of us all, yes?” Pip said with a cheeky smile. 

Integra nodded to Walter, and he silently disappeared down the stone walkway. His sense of unease at leaving her in Stein’s company was slightly alleviated by the fact that Alucard was also there. 

But only slightly. 

~*~

_Hello? Soul, are you there? Soul!_

Maka turned around but there was only darkness surrounding her, engulfing her in its ebony embrace. She was floating as if trapped in space, but there were no stars to guide her. She was utterly alone and disorientated, and she began to feel her heart pound in her chest in terror. 

The last thing she remembered was standing in the room, watching the horror on the catboy’s T.V. monitor. The waves she’d been feeling—the pulses of power Alucard’s presence emanated—suddenly changed and washed over her like a tidal wave. Caught by surprise, she looked at the vampire and—

It wasn’t Alucard doubled over laughing at the Major’s declaration of war. Instead, she saw his black silhouette when the eyes appeared. Red eyes dotted the black figure until there were thousands of them looking at her, staring straight through her. Those thousands of eyes froze her, and they changed into mouths with gnashing teeth, open in silent screams. Mouths that just as quickly morphed into thousands of arms with hands reaching for her, ready to drag into the nightmare she had witnessed—

She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears, both actions completely useless considered the absolute blackness and silence she was engulfed in. _There’s no eyes, no eyes, no eyes, there’s no eyes, no eyes, no eyes…_

_I’m impressed. I’ve only run across a couple Meisters during my reign, but none of them survived our initial meeting. At least, not with so much of their sanity still intact_ , a male voice said. Alucard was suddenly floating before her, causing Maka to shriek. She tried to push herself backwards, away from the monster, but with nothing to push against she simply floated with her arms going in wild directions. 

_I don’t much care for unnecessary screaming_ , the vampire said slowly, immediately quieting her with his veiled threat. 

She stopped. Soul! Papa! Help! He has eyes! she called out, realizing belatedly that she wished someone, anyone, even her father was there to help her. The vampire made no move towards her, causing her to pause and glare at him. 

_You have eyes!_ She said in an accusatory manner. _Evil eyes, stay away, keep your hands away, evil eyes! What did you do to me?_ She demanded. 

Alucard shrugged. He moved his hands together until his thumbs and index fingers made a box, which her peered through at her. _You witnessed true darkness, Maka Alban. How did it feel?_

She closed her eyes and curled up in a ball at seeing that red eye looking at her. _How…many?_

_Excuse me?_

_How…many…have you killed?_ She asked quietly. It felt like her sanity was a balloon that was about to float away and disappear. She forced herself to think about the vampire, not his eyes, and his words and the meanings of those words. 

Alucard looked bored. _As many as I wanted to, as many as I was ordered to._

She shuddered, but it wasn’t from the temperature. _How do you know my name?_

_Humans think very loudly._

Alucard continued to watch her, quickly making her squirm with annoyance. _So…are you just going to stare me to death now?_ She asked. The fear was tangling up her stomach and her tongue felt heavy, but she couldn’t stand another second in this void.

The vampire let out a surprised laugh. _My Master would be most displeased if I did **that**_. He looked her over once more. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she was only barely keeping her cool (and her sanity), yet he knew that if he had any intention of attacking her, she’d fight tooth and nail against him. _Too bad I’m still attached to the Police Girl_ , he muttered. 

He held out one of his gloved hands to her. _Come, Maka, we must go._

She only hesitated for a second, but if it was between the void and her own mad ravings, she would’ve preferred Alucard kill her quickly. Maka took his hand. 

~*~

She blinked several times to find Soul and Spirit watching her expectantly. “Maka!” They both hugged her at once, and there was a cheer from everyone in the room. 

“Soul!” Maka returned the hug to her partner. 

Spirit looked ready to cry. “Maka, Papa’s here too, you know…”

Stein pushed Soul and Spirit aside. “Maka, how are you feeling?” he asked quietly. He laid a cold hand on her arm, making her shudder. 

“Um…I think I’m alright. What happened?”

“You fainted standing up,” Tsubaki informed her.

“You looked like someone who had seen Medusa and turned to stone!” Patty colorfully added. 

“A sound analogy,” Stein admitted. 

“I _fainted_? In front of the _Queen of England_?!” Maka’s voice was pitched high as she flopped back on the bed and shoved a pillow over her face. “Some just kill me now!” her muffled voice called out in embarrassment. 

“Well, I’m pretty sure she didn’t notice since Nazis were declaring war on her country,” Kid offered. 

“From what I can tell, the connection between your soul and your body in restored,” Stein said. He looked over at Alucard. “She doesn’t seem bad considering.”

“I don’t break everything I touch all the time,” Alucard said. “It’s just more fun that way.”

“Now that this crisis has been averted,” Sir Integra interrupted loudly. “We need to discuss battle contingencies.” 

At that moment Walter appeared with the fiery-headed pilot Shorty, a fearfully following Crona, and a man and woman in their early thirties that no one remembered seeing on the tiny plane.   
Crona stepped one foot inside the room, saw Alucard, and prompted screeched. “Monster!” he cried. “I can feel your power! He’s gonna eat us all, I can’t handle that!” 

“Control yourself!” Integra barked at the boy, and to everyone’s surprise Crona immediately went quiet and deathly still. His eyes dropped to the floor in fear. Integra’s eyes softened, as did her tone. “What’s your name?”

“C-Crona…the demonswordsman,” he said with a shaking tone. 

“Crona, ignore Alucard for the time. He’ll not harm you, or any of your friends. Pay him no heed.”

Crona nodded but refused to look at anyone. 

The doctor motioned towards the pilot and Integra. 

“Sir Integra Hellsing, Captain Shorty Sparks.” They exchanged a quick handshake. 

“What’s with the weirdos crawlin’ out of the woodworks?” Pip asked, motioned towards the new additions. 

“These are my crew. Mina and Jackson Kirby,” Sparks said. They looked to be identical twins, with the same lean build, tanned skin, and same bluish-black hair. The boy had one blue eye and the girl had one red eye. Each was wearing an eyepatch, each had scars on their faces. They wore matching denim coveralls with a white t-shirt, boots, and a bandana around their necks. 

“How come we didn’t see you guys on the plane?” Black Star asked. 

“They were on the plane, they just weren’t _in_ it,” Sparks said with a sly smirk. He slung an arm around their shoulders, and it was funny to see the two adults easily towered over him. “Wing-mounted Vulcan Gatling guns, capable of firing up to 4,000 rounds a minute! Well, soul rounds, anyway. ”

“…You two are weapons?!” Maka asked. 

Mina and Jackson nodded. 

“They were born mute,” Sparks added when neither answered Maka directly. “But trust me, firepower is a universal language _everyone_ can understand.”

“Now I understand why Lord Death sent you over with us for this mission,” Spirit said. 

“What mission is that? Death said something about this being a possible hot drop, but so far I’m getting frostbite with the lack of heat on this job,” Sparks said, looking around. “What’s the problem?”

“Nazi vampires just declared war on Great Britain,” Sir Integra stated. 

Sparks blinked once, then let out a braying laugh. “Oh, come on, you’re joking!....Right?”

It died quickly in his throat when he noticed no one else was laughing.

“Oh, hell, you aren’t joking,” he said. He stood for a few minutes and pondered that while Mina and Jackson shared a raised eyebrow. “Well, that’s certainly something new to add to the resume.”

“Indeed. The question is now, what do we do?” Walter asked the room. 

“I fear we’ll have to wait until Millennium reveals itself,” Sir Integra said—there was a cold anger in her tone. “There’s no point in wasting bullets shooting in the dark.”

“Knowing Millennium, it most likely won’t be a long wait,” Alucard offered. 

~*~

“Doctor, are you quite done poking und prodding me yet?”

“Ach, sorry Colonel. It’s just so…fascinating! How did Schrodinger transport you here? He can only carry wery small items.”

Colonel Brunner, who was sitting on an operating table in the Doctor’s Laboratory, smirked. “It took many trips.” She said vaguely. She grabbed her left arm and the black sutures running along her skin disappeared, allowing the arm to pop off her body like a doll part. 

“My God!” The Doctor said, excitement on his face. She pushed her arm back to the shoulder and the black sutures reappeared, sewing her arm back together. 

“You are a wampire, yet you are also a valking corpse powered by black magic.” The Doctor bit his finger, gnawing on it as his mind raced with possibilities. “Colonel, you are a most unique specimen! Even a possible progenitor of a new species!” 

There was a powerful rumble that shook the floor underneath them. Brunner looked around, narrowed her eyes. “Zhe engines have been engaged.” Pushing past the Nazi doctor, she hopped off the table, a gleam of excitement in her otherwise dead eyes. “Finally, the var vill begin! I must get to zhe command center.” 

“But, Colonel, I do zhink you should stay here. Zhe entire Battalion is on deck, and you veren’t able to control yourself last time—“

“I’ve always remained in control of myself,” Brunner said coldly. “I’ve waited over fifty years for zhis moment, Herr Doctor. I don’t suggest you stand in my vay.”

“My…my apologies,” the Doctor said, standing aside. “Before you go, I have something to return to you.” He strode to a metal locker on the wall and returned with an officer’s coat. The fabric was worn but the black wasn’t even faded. The stars on the breast pocket were still intact, and the Nazi swastika flag patch on her left sleeve looked brand new. 

“My old jacket?” She asked. She slipped it on her shoulders and found it was a little big. Her new body was smaller than her previous one. “You never struck me as one for sentiment.”

“I knew you’d need it vhen you came back. The wampire’s rampage in South America prevented us from recovering you ourselves.”

Brunner took the bottom of the coat and tied the tails together over her midriff. The Doctor’s jaw hung open slightly—in over fifty years he’d never seen her let a wrinkle touch that jacket, and now she was tying it in a crude knot? He wondered what else had changed with the Colonel….

~*~

**Zhere’s so much! They’re everyvhere, can’t you smell zhem Colonel?!**

_Shut up, Krieg! They are our subordinates, our army. We can’t feed on zhem._

**So delicious, like a fine aged vine of power. Of darkness. Why can’t ve have just vone more, please?!**

Brunner walked purposely through the ranks of the damned until she came to stand just behind the Captain and the Doctor, framing the Major as he gave his long-awaited War speech. She felt a chill pass over her as she heard those words echoing around her. “I. Love. Var.”

The time had finally come, the war was about to begin, and she was having a hard time controlling her…hunger. Ever since that first drop had touched her tongue she’d been wanting more, needing more blood. A hunger that she hadn’t noticed was starting to consume her every thought. And if her own mind didn’t remind her of that delectable concoction, then her blood partner Krieg was quick to take up the mantra. 

**Zhere’s so many, he won’t miss one…or two…or a few dozen…**

_Krieg! Be quiet this instant!_ Brunner barked to herself. She shuddered and swore there was a cold sweat on her forehead, but a quick and subtle hand movement revealed there was nothing there. Of course there wasn’t—she was dead. She didn’t sweat, feel pain, or fear or hunger. And yet there was a sensation of starvation and she was surrounded by a smorgasbord of food!

“…Let us **rouse** those slumbering ones who drove us into the realm of forgetfulness. Let us seize their hair, drag them down, open their eyes, und make them remember. Ve shall make them remember the taste of terror. Ve shall make them remember the sound of our war boots. Ve shall remind them that something in the interval between Heaven und Earth they don’t recall vith their philosophy does indeed exist. The Kampf Gruppe of a thousand Wampires vill burn the vorld to a crisp.”

“Krieg! Krieg! Krieg! Krieg!” the army’s soldiers cried out in hysteric jubilation as the Major took his seat, a grand smile of triumph on a his face. 

**Why are zhose wampires screaming my name?**

Brunner was just glad no one else could hear her idiotic partner’s voice except herself. Although, now she wished she couldn’t hear it, either….

“The target ist London. Let us begin our new Vorld Var!” The Major said with a cackle, and the great zeppelin took to the skies, leaving its hiding spot for the last 50 years and lifting into the air with two other airships. 

It was finally happening. The war to end all wars was _finally starting_. 

“Lieutenant Rip Van Winkle, your time has come,” the Major said. The girl (for, in Brunner’s eyes, she was just a child) stepped forward, a smile on her freckled face. 

“I em ready for anyzhing, Major!”

“Ve ave a target for you to infiltrate. Your job ist zhe most important of all, but do not let your guard down for even a moment. The HMS Eagle ist between us und London. You vill take it over, and you vill finally face Zamiel.”

“Oh, I’m ready to face him, Major!” the girl said, face gleaming like a bride on her wedding day. 

“Shall I go too, Major?” Brunner stepped forward and asked. It was the first time she had come face to face with the Werewolves, the super-powered vampires that made up the special ops unit the Major controlled. Zorin, the Captain (an actual werewolf), Schrodinger, and Rip Van Winkle were all part of the unit. They all looked surprised at the Colonel, but Zorin stepped forward and shook hands warmly with her old C.O. 

“Brunner! You’ve been returned to us!” 

“And better zhan ever before,” Brunner said. She looked at the Major, straightened her back a little more, and met his eyes. “Vell?”

“The Lieutenant’s mission doesn’t require your presence, Colonel. She’ll be just fine un her own. No, I vant you on zhe front lines, on zhe ground. London will be nothing but ash.”

Brunner cracked open a rare smirk—it made the vampires in the army shudder. She held out her hand to the slip of a girl. “Zhen best of luck, Lieutenant. You’re about to try und catch a hurricane in a butterfly net.”

She looked nervous but took the Colonel’s cold, dead hand and shook it. “Danke, Colonel.”

**She’s right zhere, right zhere, how can you not vant to bite zhat pale neck!**

Brunner shook her head and blocked Krieg’s ramblings from her mind. She couldn’t lose her composure again, not again. The vampires were staring at her like a rabid dog, she needed to stay in control. 

Only until they reached London.

~*~

The sleek car drove along an empty stretch of road that passed through miles of undisturbed trees. Its light silver color made it easy to keep an eye on from the air as Captain Sparks navigated his aircraft to follow the vehicle. 

The airplane was packed with the DWMA students, but it was also carrying another passenger. Sir Integra Hellsing sat at the front of the plane, across from Stein and Spirit. She looked bored about the entire passage, but Stein caught her sneak a glance towards the back end of the plane, taking in the students that were scattered around. Unlike before, none of them were sleeping. They were all too wired. 

“Ask their names, Integra,” Stein said to her. The reflections from his glasses made his eyes impossible to see. “You should know the names of the kids willing to fight and die for your cause.”

She bristled at this statement. “You brought them here, Stein.”

“At your behest. You asked for our best.”

She fumed for a moment in silent anger. She really didn’t want to be reminded that she had felt the assistance necessary. They were proud Brits. They could handle anything on their own. It had been a moment of weakness, of fear, that made her call Stein after the Valentine Brothers’ attack on the mansion. And it was that moment of weakness that had brought these children to her. 

She turned to the kids, who all looked at her. “Tell me, what are your names?” She asked quietly. 

The names washed over her, and she took a moment to remember them all. To remember their innocent faces, their voices, so that they could haunt her dreams later when they didn’t survive the coming war. 

“I’m surprised your guard dogs let you ride with us alone,” Stein said. 

Sir Integra didn’t answer, but she wondered how the car ride was going considering Walter, Pip, Alucard, and Seras were all in the vehicle.

_She’s about as fun as a hemorrhoid_ , Spirit thought grumpily to himself as she looked out the window. 

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” Sir Integra stated. She looked out the window once more. “The Hellsing Mansion is straight ahead,” she said loudly so the pilot could hear her. 

“That pile of rubble is our L.Z.? I’ll circle to see where I can land this baby,” Sparks shouted back. 

Everyone crowded the windows and sure enough the mansion, or what was left of it, came into view. It was a hulking mass of stone rubble, though a good half of the building was still standing. 

“The vampires did this?” Stein asked. 

“I’ll make Millennium pay if it’s the last thing I do while breathing,” Sir Integra said, gloved hand curling into a fist. 

After several minutes, Sparks found a spot and was able to land the plane in a field clear of debris. They exited the plane and stood in awe of the place. Even with half of it blown to bits, there was still an air of respect and dignity the old building commanded. 

“Hellsing will always stand, no matter the odds against us,” Integra said proudly as she stood on the grassy ground outside of the plane. “Hellsing has never quit, never surrendered, and has never fallen. A poor attempt at intimidation, that’s all this was. Captain Bernadette! Gather your men together and begin preparing Hellsing Headquarters for imminent attack. Millennium will come calling soon.” 

Stein looked at the students and noticed most of them were blinking slowly, and trying to stifle yawns. “Looks like their ready to fall over,” he said. 

“We’re fine!” Soul argued. 

“Maka, sweetie, you look exhausted,” Spirit said, trying to lead her back on the plane. 

“Leave me alone, I’m not—yawn—tired!” 

“You always did throw a fit when you were a sweepy whittle bunny,” Spirit said. Maka’s cheeks grew hot enough to cook a steak medium-well. 

“Get some sleep,” Integra said. She looked up at the sky and noticed it lightening. “Alucard and Seras will be asleep soon as well. I have a feeling we might not have a chance again for a while.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to say that I mention some soul limitations in this chapter, and if they're not completely accurate, I apologize. I'm basing this fic off what I remember and can research from the anime, so if I get some technical things wrong, I apologize!

It was mid-day when the Hellsing butler was sent to retrieve the DWMA associates. The adults looked haggard and tired, and the kids were all yawning and groaning. Apparently the small plane had not been particularly comfortable, but it beat sleeping in a crumbling building with two vampires hiding inside.

Sparks and his weapons also followed the conga line of students into the Hellsing Mansion (what was left of it anyways) as they navigated piles of debris and hardened mercenaries eyeing them carefully. The Wild Geese were just as curious about the kids as the kids were about them, but there was no time for introductions. 

Something had happened while they had slept. 

They came into Sir Integra’s office. Integra was looking at them as they entered with her hands steepled in front of her. There was weariness, a dread in her eyes, and it most likely had nothing to do with the fact that the mad scientist was standing in her home once again. 

Walter was bristling at Stein’s return to the Hellsing Manor but said nothing. “Would anyone care for tea?” he asked simply. He held a tray of biscuits. 

“FOOD!” Black Star said. Walter was immediately drowning in a sea of hungry teenagers. Once the feeding frenzy subsided, he was left with a few crumbs on the sterling silver platter. 

“Oh, my,” was all the butler said. The teenagers looked worse than before. 

“Kid! I’m hungry!” Patty whined.

“Yeah, Maka, when can we eat?” Soul asked. “And I mean real food, not this…uh…snack stuff.”

“Seriously, we haven’t eaten in days!” Liz complained. 

Sir Integra raised an eyebrow at Stein. He pulled out a cigarette with his lips, lit it, and let it hang from his mouth. 

“We hate to overstep our boundaries, but do you have any actual food here?” Spirit asked. 

“Walter?” she asked, without breaking eye contact with the scientist. 

“I’ll go speak with the Captain and see what can be whipped up,” Walter promised, disappearing across the room with barely a noise. 

“So, what’s going on? Walter said something happened,” Maka said loudly. She looked around, probably waiting for Alucard to appear, but the noonday sun soon quelled her fears. 

“Not completely sure,” Sir Integra responded. “All we know is that a warship, the HMS Eagle, has gone silent in the Atlantic. No word of any sort. I’m taking Walter to London with me and speaking to Sir Penwood at the National Security office. 

“You think this is Millennium at work?” Kid asked. 

Integra nodded. Unlike the others, the boy in the tuxedo carried himself differently, and acted much more mature. She liked his directness. 

Stein and Spirit shared a look. “I think it might be wise for us to accompany you,” Stein said. 

“Don’t think I can handle myself?”

“On the contrary. But as representatives of the DWMA, if there’s any intelligence we can use or offer, it’s our job to do so. Especially now.” 

“I can’t take a gaggle of teenagers,” Sir Integra said. 

“They can stay here. We’ll be back shortly.” 

Integra looked them over. These kids that acted so…normal, childish. “What if things turn sour while we’re gone?” she asked. 

Stein let a little smirk pass his face. “You’ve been fighting vampires for a few hundred years, but the DWMA has been doing its work for centuries. These kids are more than a match for any wayward vampires.” 

Integra stood up. “Seras will stay here with Captain Bernadette. Walter, go fetch Alucard. Dr. Stein and Mr. Alban will accompany us to London.”

“What can we do to help?” Maka asked. 

Integra’s eyes flashed at the girl. For a moment her eyes softened. She remembered a time, long ago it once was, when she was a young headstrong woman the same age. 

“Help the men secure the mansion,” she ordered the students. She looked at Stein and Spirit. “We’ll be leaving shortly. Is your pilot available?”

~*~

Captain Sparks was a man who got bored easily. He hadn’t minded playing taxi and bringing the Hellsing woman, Spirit, and Stein to London, but now it was mid-afternoon and he was getting antsy. He had been left behind at the London airport, on a private landing strip, while the three had gone to their appointment via waiting car. 

Instead of waiting inside the plane for the mysterious Hellsing head to finish her business, he was tinkering with the airplane’s engine. Truthfully, there was nothing more that could be done to the old bird. He had taken meticulous care of the plane, and not a screw was loose nor a speck of rust could be found anywhere under the hood. 

Stepping away, Shorty patted the faded logo under the plane's cockpit, a bodacious blonde pin-up girl whose polka dot dress was being blow up by a playful breeze. Winking, she managed to look both flirtatious and dangerous. A pair of angel's wings grew from her shoulders. 'Angelica' was scrawled in cursive under her feet. 

He loved Angelica; he’d been her pilot for many years, and she was a hand-me-down from his Grandfather, Captain William Sparks. In WWII this plane had flown missions at his grandfather’s careful hands, and had saved a lot of Ally lives while taking out many Axis fighters. What a strange twist of fate, for his grandson to have to face the same enemy seventy years later. Course, Grandad would’ve loved the fact that it was his baby that was going to give it to those bastards one more time. 

“Angelica was always happiest in a dog fight,” Grandad had said, and Shorty had to agree. The plane was a relic, but she was as much a part of his life as his weapons. The four of them were a match made in Heaven—or Hell, if you happened to be on the receiving end of the Soul Miniguns.

Mina and Jackson were arguing with each other over something with the wings. Their hands gestured angrily and they were glowering at each other. Shorty watched for a second, and saw the problem. Ah, Jackson through it would be better if they materialized farther out on the wings, to allow a wider targeting area. Mina was stalwart in her opinion that the middle of the wing was the sweet spot, so Angelica’s balance wouldn’t be affected. 

He was about to offer his own opinion on the matter when his cell phone rang. 

“Captain Sparks, flying ace extraordinaire,” he answered distractedly. He perked up. “Stein? Ready for me to come pick you up? No? Okay, well, what do you—“

Shorty listened for a moment, nodding once in a while. His weapons noticed his subdued monosyllabic answer to whatever Stein was asking him. They shared a look and stepped closer.

“Yeah, that’s definitely a problem. And here’s my answer: OH. HELL. NO.” Shorty snapped into the phone. “I’m here to watch your backs, and I can’t very well do that if I get shot down and drown in the damned Atlantic! Find someone else to be your errand boy!”

He hung up the phone and gave his weapons a look of complete disbelief, followed by indignation. “He wanted me to drop that crazy vampire off on a compromised aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean!”

Mina arched an eyebrow at him. 

“I know the Doc is a mad scientist and all, but that’s just _insane_.”

~*~

An few hours later, there was still no word from Stein, and Shorty was now sitting in the plane with his two weapons. He looked at Jackson with a calculating glare. 

“Do you have…an ace?” He asked seriously. 

Triumphantly, Jackson made a motion of casting out a fishing line. 

“Ah, dammit, seriously?” Shorty swore before grabbing another card to add to his hand. The siblings silently snickered and high-fived each other. 

“Yeah, yeah, I don’t why I even play this game with you two,” he mumbled. “Cheaters! Although how you two manage to cheat at ‘Go Fish’ I’ll never—“

His stomach let out an enormous rumble. Shorty rolled his eyes. “Oh, for the love of GOD, Stein, what is the big hold up here?” Ignoring his weapons, he laid his cards face down on the makeshift milk-crate table and opened the side door. He walked down to the asphalt of the runway and looked around, stretching his legs and back. His weapons followed, and Shorty watched the big jumbo jets taxi back and forth on the main runways. The noise was horrendous as planes landed and took off—the ground shook underneath him.

“Don’t wander too far,” Shorty told his partners. “I’m not scraping you guys off the runway if another plane squishes you into a pancake.”

Jackson rolled his eyes. 

He looked up at the sky and sighed. Dusk was spreading over the western sky now. The dark purple night was overtaking the faded sunset quickly, and a cool breeze whipped past the pilot. His stomach growled again, and he felt angry. If he was hungry, his partners definitely were, and had he known the Hellsing _princess_ was going to take her sweet ass time they could’ve headed into town and gotten a bite to eat—

There were three black spots on the horizon that caught Shorty’s attention. He narrowed his eyes and lifted his hand to try and block the last rays of the setting sun. His hair stood at attention. 

“What the hell?” He asked.

Mina stood next to him and watched the approaching aircraft herself, frowning in confusion. 

“Just more planes,” Shorty said dismissively, seeing the blinking lights on the wingtips. “Sorry, guess my paranoia got the better of me.”

The airplane silhouette changed, and became three separate shapes. Long, cylindrical, enormous zeppelins from a bygone era. A familiar flag of hate flew on the tail of the blimps, visible even a few miles away.

The color drained from the pilot’s face. “Oh, holy hell,” he swore. “Come on. Come on!” He grabbed his weapons’ hands and dragged them back onto the plane and slammed the door behind them. 

“Nazis…holy crap on a cracker, ACTUAL NAZIS!” He hissed. The three of them crowded forward into the tiny cockpit to see the zeppelins slowly approach the outskirts of London. 

Shorty slipped into his seat and shoved the headset over his wild red hair. “Tower Control, this is Double S 341….Tower Control, anyone home?” 

There was silence on the line. 

“Hey, where the hell is everyone?! We’ve got an incoming bogey, anyone there!” Shorty snapped into the mike, but there was still no answer. 

“They’ve _got_ to be watching those on radar…they’ve _got_ to be calling for help…” He looked, but nothing seemed to be happening. No flashing police sirens, no fighter jets, nothing out of the ordinary. 

He changed channels. “This is Captain Sparks. We’ve got incoming at the airport, heading your way!”

There was no response from anyone at the National Security office, where Integra had her appointment. That only made the sweat on his brow run cold. Something had happened; something _bad_ had happened. 

The zeppelins turned a few degrees and passed harmlessly by the airport, but they were obviously heading straight for the heart of London. He could see the famous clock tower in the distance, along with the rest of the cityscape. 

“It’ll be the Blitz all over again,” Shorty said in horror. 

Jackson’s hand fell hard on his shoulder, and he looked to see his weapons glowering at the blimps. Jackson’s one blue eye shined at him in excitement, and he jerked his thumb at the wings of the plane. 

Sparks nodded. “Outside, now!” 

The weapons disappeared outside and with a flash of light two immaculate miniguns were hanging from the wings of the plane once more. Sparks spent several minutes getting the plane ready for takeoff. He watched the retreating aircraft with a sense of dreadful foreboding that made his hands shake and his breathe labored. 

The engine roared to life, and he pulled his goggles down onto his face. The world was suddenly awash in red and blue. 

“Hope you two are ready for a little WWII re-enactment,” Shorty muttered to himself.

_I’m telling you, Mina, we shoulda stayed farther out on the wings,_ a male voice suddenly growled in his head. 

_And I’m telling you that the wider spray area wouldn’t have been worth the loss of agility due to the changed weight distribution_ , Mina’s sing-song professor’s voice piped up. 

“Hey, kids, we’re working now,” Shorty said, shutting down the sibling’s argument. Then again, Mina and Jackson were almost always arguing over something. That was the reason Shorty left his goggles off most of the time: he couldn’t handle the constant bickering. 

“How’re the eyes?” Shorty asked, flipping on the finals instruments and buckling himself into his seat. His weapons replied in the affirmative. 

Shorty took a few precious seconds to allow his spirit to flow into the steering handles, which synced him up with his weapons on the wings of the plane. Though the red and blue goggles were a little disorienting at first, the colors of the world around him returned to their normal hues. He could feel the guns on the wings follow his eye movements. Up, down, left, right. 

_Everything’s fine on my side,_ Mina said. 

_Same here,_ Jackson replied. 

_Are you sure those are the Nazis Sir Integra mentioned?_ Mina asked. 

_Do you see any other World War II flying aircraft around?_ Jackson responded. 

“Kids, don’t make me turn this plane around!” Shorty snapped, feeling another argument waiting in the wings. His weapons were silenced, and he began the run down the runway a bit more recklessly than normal. 

“That’s them. We gotta make sure these Third Reich bastards don’t start World War III!” Shorty growled. The plane lifted, the ground fell out from under them, and they quickly began to follow the large blimps over crowded areas of Britain’s largest city. 

“We gotta get Stein, Spirit, and Integra!” Shorty said, flying higher and higher until the blimps were far below his plane.

Shorty’s knuckles turned white from the death grip he had on the steering column. For a moment, the whole world froze. Time stopped, gravity was turned off. The plane hung far up in the air like a hovering hawk eyeing some small rodent on the ground. His prey were the three remnant aircraft below him. His weapons were armed and ready. There was just enough time for the meister pilot to take a steady breath before the plane began its controlled dive straight towards the ground. 

“It’s time to send these bastards back to the history books!” Shorty yelled enthusiastically. The city of London raced up towards them at a sickening pace, but it was the blimps he was aiming towards. To the civilians looking up in shocked curiosity, it appeared that the tiny plane was going to punch right through a zeppelin or crash headfirst into the ground!

Black shapes suddenly began to pour from the zeppelin’s underslung carriages. They fell to the ground en masse; Shorty wasn’t really surprised when none of the soldiers let loose a single parachute to slow their descent. 

_Paratroopers without the para,_ Mina commented. 

_What’re the chances they’ll all die on impact?_ Jackson asked sarcastically.

“FIRE!” Shorty yelled. He guided the plane under the blimps as Mina and Jackson opened fire. Soul bullets screamed through the air, ripping apart the falling vampires. Undead Nazi soldiers became little more than stripes of flesh and fabric within seconds. 

“Hell yeah!” Shorty shouted. Bullets suddenly pinged off the sides of the plane. Some of the vamps were shooting at them while freefalling!

“Hey, you owe me a new paint job!” Shorty yelled as he wove in and out of falling vampires. 

_The plane’s needed one for a while now,_ Jackson quipped. 

“ _They_ didn’t know that! And are you calling my Angelica _ugly_?” Shorty snapped. 

_Boys, incoming!_ Mina yelled.

Short had gotten a little close to the jumping vampires as he passed under the ships. The plane dipped violently as a vampire, complete with machine gun and Nazi military garb, landed on the windshield of the plane. Shorty gritted his teeth as he tied the level the plane out. _Damn! My weapons can’t shoot him!_

The vampire pressed his face to the windshield and leered madly at the DWMA pilot. “Ve are invincible! We are Millennium! Hehe, I can _smell_ your fear from here!”

“Oh, please, I’ve seen scarier cereal mascots than you!” Shorty yelled through the glass. With a smug grin, Shorty sent the plane into a spiral, sending the Nazi flying through the air. His weapons made quick work of the monster. “Hope you get the meet Count Chocula in Hell!”

Everything became a blur of action—Shorty didn’t even have time to think about his actions, he could only fly and maneuver the plane on instinct. He was surrounded by a cacophony of sound from the engines, his guns, and his weapons shouting in his head. He cut down dozens of vampires, trying to kill them before they hit the ground. Despite the trio’s best efforts, some managed to land. People tried to run but were shot or ripped apart. Cars crashed, fires began to burn, blood began to run in the streets. It was now dark, and the vampires were in their element in the shadows of the night. 

No other fighter jets or helicopters, from the police or the army or anything appeared in the sky to fight off the invasion. Flashes of blue and red lights on the ground meant the local cops were trying to fight back, but they were unprepared and overwhelmed. The German bastards had been thorough. If no orders were coming from the National Security Office to attack or defend, did that mean that Stein, Death Scythe, and the Hellsing woman were all now dead?

Didn’t matter. He flew through a cloud of blood; he had to use the windshield wiper to make a clean patch to see through. 

_Just how many are there?!_ Mina asked. Thousands of soul rounds later and they were still coming.

_Enough, apparently_ , was Jackson’s sardonic reply. 

_Why don’t we just hit the blimps?_ Mina asked her Meister.

“We can’t!” Shorty growled. “Remember the Hindenburg disaster? Imagine how much more of a disaster it would’ve been if London had been under it instead of an open field! Eventually they’ll run out of soldiers and leave.”

_Yeah, well, we don’t have eventually_ , Jackson said. 

_And you can’t keep up this fighting forever. These forms are for intense, short-term combat. You can’t keep this up long term._ Mina warned him. 

They’re words washed over him, but he ignored them. So what that there was sweat on his forehead; his hands were shaking; his breath quick and shallow?

“We will take down as many of these bastards as possible. Until they hit the ground, they’re in our territory, and we’re the sharks in this particular ocean.” 

Shorty’s hot-headedness was showing once again, but he could see the twins share a look of friendly determination in his head.

His confidence was shaken as he passed under the biggest blimp of all and another vampire successfully landed on the nose of the plane. But then, more weight dropped onto the small craft. More vampires, on the wings, the tail, clawing at the plane’s metal skin; they were trying to knock the plane out of the sky by weighing it down. Or they were going to tear it apart mid-air.

Shorty roared his anger as he struggled to keep the plane in the air. “I don’t like stowaways!” He yelled at the vampire trying to smash its way into the cockpit. The glass cracked under a super-powered fist, but held. 

_There’s too many!_ Jackson yelled.

_Shorty? Shorty!_ Mina cried. 

He wouldn’t be able to keep Angelica up much longer. The extra weight of the vampires meant he was fighting against gravity, and the soul rounds his weapons were letting loose were draining his soul’s reserves. He was getting tired. Mina and Jackson tried to shoot the vampires off; they’d never been in such an intense dogfight before. Then again, the fate of a million people had never weighed him down before, either. 

Shorty, I’m almost out! Mina warned.

Don’t stop, Sis! Keep firing!

The lone captain of the resistance let a sad smile place over his face. The vampires leered and gnashed their teeth. Shorty closed his eyes for a precious second and concentrated. The darkness in his mind’s eye changed to a view of vampire’s climbing all over the plane like ants and a city beginning to be engulfed in flames.

“Can’t believe this is how we go out,” Shorty spat. 

_Overcome by a bunch of parasites_ , Jackson said. 

_Disgusting cowards!_ Mina agreed with rare venom in her voice. _What’s the plan, boss?_ They asked in tandem in his head.

Shorty roared and pulled the steering column back, sending the plane arcing up and shooting towards the sky. “Get off my plane!” he yelled. 

_How do you plan on choking dead guys?_ Jackson asked.

“Not choking. I’ll freeze their asses! Turn them into Nazi-sicles!” Shorty said. The G-forces dragged at his body; it was getting hard to think the farther he flew into the atmosphere. The weapons had stopped firing for a moment. That allowed him to hear the vampire’s claw tearing at the metal, especially around the door windows. They were going to claw their way in and rip him apart right in his Granddad’s baby.

“I can’t lose this plane. I can’t lose my weapons!” Shorty said angrily. “I’ll go down with this ship, and I’ll take all of you down with me!”

The edges of his vision started to go black, but he had to keep going. His fingers were numb as they went higher and higher into the air. The needles were all red, there was an oxygen alarm screeching at him, and it was really hard to keep his eyes open—

~/////~

_It was Orientation Day. Kids were laughing and talking. There were flashes of light as Weapons transformed in the hands of their new Meisters. It was a good day for making friends and the whole event felt like a grand party._

_Shorty, young and full of confidence and mischief, had yet to find a partner. No one he’d tried felt right. While holding a gun or a blade he always felt…unbalanced. What was he supposed to do with his free hand? Make rude gestures at his enemy? Maybe that’s how everyone felt when they were holding the wrong weapon, but he had nothing to compare it too. All he could do was keep searching._

_He was so busy acting unconcerned about his lack of partner that he stumbled right into a pair of siblings. Twins, a brother and sister, only discernable by their blue and red eyes. The brother jumped in front of his sister, to protect her from Shorty, apparently. He raised a fist at Shorty in irritation._

_“Chill, kiddo! I didn’t mean it,” Shorty said cheerfully._

_Neither sibling spoke, though the sister put a hand on her brother’s shoulder to calm him._

_“Look, I said I was sorry, now it’s your turn to say ‘No problemo!’” Shorty huffed. “What, cat got both your tongues?”_

_The boy flipped the middle finger at the meister hopeful. Shorty’s eyes lit up in realization._

_“Wait, can you guys talk at all?”_

_The sister shook her head, and boy glowered at her for responding._

_Shorty snickered, then laughed out loud. He reached forward and flung his arms around their shoulders like he’d known them for years. “Can’t talk? That’s fine! I’ll talk enough for all three of us. We’ll make a great team. I’m going to be the world’s best pilot, and you two will be my co-pilots, and we’ll destroy any evil we come across! Deal?”_

_The siblings looked at his outstretched hand, then at each other. They only conferred with each other for a silent moment before they shook his hand._

~/////~

_Shorty felt like the world had dropped out from under his feet. “Wha…what are you talking about? What do you mean, **I can’t be a pilot?!** ”_

_“I’m sorry, Sparks,” Lord Death said. He was turned away from the broken-hearted look on the student’s face. His cartoonish hands were clasped behind his back. “That’s the way it must be.”_

_“Bullshit!” Sparks snapped. Jackson and Mina stood on either side of him, eyes downcast._

_“Sparks,” Spirit Alban warned._

_“Such foul language!” Death said. There was a smack, and Shorty was on the ground, cradling his head and moaning in pain. The Reaper massaged his giant hand. “You get a Reaper Chop if you speak like that again. Although with a head that hard, it might just hurt me more than you…”_

_“As I was saying, being a Meister is a great and terrible destiny, Sparks,” Spirit explained to the ungrateful kid._

_“I grew up only wanting to fly!” the meister said. “My grandfather taught me everything he knew before he died, and my mother flew as well. You can’t ask me to give this up!”_

_“Sparks, be reasonable,” Spirit said. “Anyone with good eyesight can become a pilot. But a meister is born one in a million.”_

_“I don’t care about statistics,” he said._

_“In order to be a Meister, you have to physically touch your weapons during combat. Your weapons have to be able to channel your energy, and you have to channel theirs. How do you plan to have this Soul Resonance if you’re trying to fly an airplane? Hm?”_

_The worst part wasn’t the words, it was the gentle, fatherly way the Reaper said them._

_“You have to choose one or the other. You can’t be both,” Spirit said._

_A moment of silence hung over them. The boy’s fists shook—it was just taking a him moment to speak, when he finally got his thoughts together he was going to give Death a real piece of his mind—_

_Mina appeared by the Reaper’s side and tugged on his robe. “Yes, Mina?”_

_The mute girl’s hands started stiffly, but her excitement at some idea made her fingers fly. Death didn’t seem to have any trouble understanding her signs._

_“Joe, eh? Yes, I suppose you could talk options with him. But Mina, what if there is no third option?”_

_The look of determination on her face said it all. **Then we’ll make one** , that look said. _

_Death turned to his teenager charges. “Sparks, I truly hope you appreciate the brains you’re weapon possesses. Mina just offered a most curious proposal. There may be a way after all. You must go speak to Joe Buttataki downstairs in the basement, in the Technology and Research Office. You might just get your wish, Sparks.”_

_Mina simple looked at her Meister and winked at him. It was hard for Sparks to believe that he’d met the Kirbys only a few days ago. Their devotion to his cause made him all warm and fuzzy inside._

~/////~

He became conscious to shouting in his head. _Wake up Shorty!_ Jackson roared.

_Shorty! We’re freefalling from 30,000 feet, you’ve got to wake up!_ Mina pleaded. 

Ah, now the falling sensation made sense. He had blacked out at the top of the stratosphere, and must’ve passed out for a few precious seconds, allowing the plane to start falling. 

Shorty grabbed the steering column and wrestled to get the old bird back under control. He stopped the out-of-control falling and aimed his nose straight down. Unfortunately, the vampires were worse than leeches. A few might’ve tumbled off someone several thousand feet in the air, but most were still clinging on. That only pissed him off more. At least the one on the nose of the plane was gone, but the cracked windshield still obstructed his view.

_Nice timing for a nap!_ Jackson said. 

_Sparks, you’ve got to pull out of this dive! You won’t be able to pull up in a matter of seconds._

He was drained, and his arms burned trying to keep the bird in some semblance of control. Meisters were super-powered humans, but they had limits, and he had hit his.

The ground, the city, raced up to meet them. The three carriers flew over the city, dispelled of their cargo, now nothing more than silent observers to the carnage and chaos below. 

_What do we do? You’re exhausted and these bloodsuckers aren’t going to off themselves_ , Jackson said. 

_We’re out of ammo,_ Mina agreed. _So what do we hit them with?_

Despite frayed nerves and exhaustion, he managed to lift a hand to his goggles. One red lens, one blue. They didn’t have to do it—they could’ve waited and hoped another Meister they were compatible with would show up a few years after him. Instead, each had given up one of their own eyes so Shorty could have his dream of being a pilot. 

Seemed like the airplane was a small price to pay to save his friend’s asses.

He looked at the gas gauge. “Think half a tank of jet fuel hitting the around at a few hundred miles an hour will suffice?”

There was a shocked silence from his weapons. _You wanna kill Angelica?!_ They said in tandem. 

“An airplane can be rebuilt,” Shorty said, meaning it. He had always treated the plane like his child, but in the end, it was a machine. She could be rebuilt. His friends could not.

He pulled a hand off the steering column to touch a picture tapped there. It was a black and white photo of baby Shorty, sitting on the lap of his cigar-smoking, eyepatch-wearing Granddad. Shorty was laughing and reaching for a toy airplane his grandfather held just out of his reach. Behind them was the familiar metal nose of the very plane he was piloting. 

_I’m sure he’ll forgive us_ , Mina offered calmly. 

_As long as we take a shitload of ‘em with us!_ Jackson agreed.

An ear-piercing screech came from behind him, and he turned back to see a vampire had finally managed to rip the door off its hinges. The creature was laughing madly, and getting ready to tear him apart.

“NOW!” He smacked the red button on his dash before the vampire could get its claws around his neck. The windshield blew away and his seat was shot into the air, a few hundred feet above the skyscrapers of London. His bones almost melted into Jell-o at the force of the ejection, but he gritted his teeth and held on for dear life. He was gaining speed and heading right towards the roof of a skyscraper. With a final burst of energy he managed to leap off the chair and land on the roof without breaking anything.

He thought it was his blood rushed to his head from his sudden descent that made his violently wobble, but he realized it was in fact an explosion that had rocked him. He stumbled to the edge of the roof and looked at the plume of fire leaping into the sky from the wreckage of his…his…

“Mina? Jackson! Where are you?” He yelled out in a panicked voice. _Oh, crap, they managed to get off the plane, right?!_

Two beams of light suddenly encircled his wrists and materialized as a pair of Uzi sub-machine guns. The faces of his partners appeared in his head. 

_Looks like we got our wish,_ Mina comforted. Shorty saw the dozens of corpses scattered around the plane’s remains. A building had collapsed when the plane crashed into it. The air was filled with terrified screams of pain. Shot echoed through the city, as did soot and smoke. The horizon was red with firelight. London was burning, despite his cavalier efforts. 

He should’ve felt a little victorious; instead he just felt numb at the scene below him. 

“Damn it all!” he snarled, looking up at the darkening sky. The firelight from his burning family heirloom illuminated the bellies of the two airships hovering overhead, flying flags with that damned swastika—

Wait, _two_?

“Where’s the third one?” He demanded. 

_Up there!_ He looked up to see the other smaller blimp heading west, away from the city. Why was it doing that? What the hell was west…?

“The kids!” All three of them said in horrified tandem. 

“And Spirit and Stein are probably dead in this mess,” Shorty motioned towards the city being destroyed a few stories under them. “We gotta knock that ship out of the sky!” 

_That’s a noble thought and all, but don’t you think we should deal with those guys first?_ Jackson suggested. Shorty looked in front of him. A dozen vampires were leering at him, hunger on their gaunt faces. Many were sporting bloody fangs and insane smiles.

“Vell, it’s not often our food is polite enough to deliver itself onto our doorstep!” A vampire joked. Others laughed; it sounded like a convention of German snakes hissing at once. The Nazis leveled either claws or guns at the pilot. 

“That’s my job. Delivery. Just because I don’t have my plane doesn’t mean I’m completely useless. Just watch me deliver these bullets into your fugly faces!”

He couldn’t summon up the soul power to power two mini-guns, but small caliber arms took less of him to deal their damage. He was going to kill all these Nazi bastards, or die trying.

The vampires turned angry at his insolent words and frowned. They lunged forward. Shorty, surpassingly, wasn’t terrified. He was simply pissed. 

Soul bullets clashed with undead flesh as the blimp was swallowed up by the night.


End file.
